226 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



consequently many children. Where polygamy is permitted, — 

 and it is a widely prevalent institution, — plural wives in general 

 are apt to fall to the lot of the more enterprising and successful 

 men. 



Among primitive and semi-civilized peoples there is reason 

 to believe that, both as a result of the law of battle and the 

 exercise of female choice, the stronger and more virile men were, 

 on the whole, more apt to transmit their qualities than under 

 our present civilized regime. Progress inevitably introduces many 

 changes in the way in which sexual selection operates. In at- 

 tempting to estimate how sexual selection has been affected by 

 our modern civilization it must be borne in mind that we have 

 to reckon with various tendencies which may work to produce 

 opposed, or at least different results. As common observation 

 shows, chances for marriage are considerably reduced among the 

 conspicuously ugly. Those with morose and unsocial dispositions 

 are not so apt to attract mates as the cheerful and vivacious. The 

 sexually attractive have an advantage over the sexually unattrac- 

 tive. Vitality, both in predisposing to marriage and in rendering 

 its possessors more acceptable to the other sex, is a quality dis- 

 tinctly favored by sexual as well as by natural selection. Al- 

 though in marriage there is fortunately a wide variation in mat- 

 ters of taste, there is nevertheless a broad basis of agreement upon 

 the peculiarities of the opposite sex that are most alluring. Quali- 

 ties that make a peculiar appeal to the other sex are those which 

 in general are the index of characteristics of racial value. As 

 Havelock ElHs remarks "in most countries an important and 

 essential element of beauty lies in the emphasis of the secondary 

 and tertiary sexual characters; the special character of the hair 

 in woman, her breasts, her lips, and innumerable other qualiries 

 of minor saliency, but all apt to be of significance from the point 

 of view of sexual selection." The instinctive proclivity of man to 

 select characteristics which are the outward and visible signs of 

 qualities of importance in the perpetuation of the species has 

 doubtless long been a factor of importance in racial evolution and 

 will continue to be so long as human nature remains as it is. 



