HUMAN SELECTION 523 



equilibrium between the birth and death rates will then be 

 brought about by a combination of physical and social 

 agencies, and the bugbear of over-population become finally 

 extinct.^ 



Hoio Natural Selection tuill improve the Eaec. 



There now only remains for consideration the means by 

 which, in such a society, a continuous improvement of the 

 race could be brought about, on the assumption that for 

 this purpose education is powerless as a direct agency, 

 since its effects are not hereditary, and that some form of 

 selection is an absolute necessity. This improvement I 

 believe will certainly be effected through the agency of 

 female choice in marriage. Let us, therefore, consider 

 how this would probably act. 



It will be generally admitted that, although many 

 women now remain unmtyried from necessity rather than 

 from choice, there are always a considerable number who 

 feel no strong inclination to marriage, and who accept 

 husbands to secure a subsistence or a home of their own 

 rather than from personal affection or sexual emotion. In 

 a society in which women were all pecuniarih^ independent, 

 were all fully occupied with public duties and intellectual 

 or social enjoyments, and had nothing to gain by marriage 

 as regards material well-being, we may be sure that the 

 number of the unmarried from choice would largely 

 increase. It would probably come to be considered a de- 

 gradation for any woman to marry a man she could not 

 both love and esteem, and this feeling would supply ample 

 reasons for either abstaining from marriage altogether or 

 delaying it till a worthy and sympathetic husband was 

 encountered. In man, on the other hand, the passion of 

 love is more general, and usually stronger ; and as in such 

 a society as is here postulated there would be no way of 

 gratifying this passion but by marriage, almost every 

 woman would receive offers, and thus a powerful selective 

 agency would rest with the female sex. Under the 



' A Theory of Population deduced from the General Law of Animal 

 Fertility. Republished from the Westminster Review for April, 1852. 



