560 THE DESCENT OP MAN. 



male offspring. It accords in a striking manner with this view 

 of the modification and re-inforcement of many of our mental 

 faculties by sexual selection, that, firstly, they notoriously under- 

 go a considerable change at puberty,'" and, secondly, that eunuchs 

 remain throughout life inferior in these same qualities. Thus 

 man has ultimately become superior to woman. It is, indeed, 

 fortunate that the law of the equal transmission of characters to 

 both sexes prevails with mammals; otherwise it is probable that 

 man would have become as superior in mental endowment to 

 woman, as the peacock is in ornamental plumage to the peahen. 



It must be borne in mind that the tendency in characters ac- 

 quired by either sex late in life, to be transmitted to the same sex 

 at the same age, and of early acquired characters to be transmitted 

 to both sexes, are rules which, though general, do not always hold. 

 If they always held good, we might conclude (but I here exceed my 

 proper bounds) that the inherited effects of the early education of 

 boys and girls would be transmitted equally to both sexes; so that 

 the present inequality in mental power between the sexes would 

 not be effaced by a similar course of early training; nor can it 

 have been caused by their dissimilar early training. In order that 

 woman should reach the same standard as man, she ought, when 

 nearly adult, to be trained to energy and perseverance, and to have 

 her reason and imagination exercised to the highest point; and 

 then she would probably transmit these qualities chiefly to her 

 adult daughters. All women, however, could not be thus raised, 

 unless during many generations those who excelled in the above 

 robust virtues were married, and produced offspring in larger 

 numbers than other women. As before remarked of bodily 

 strength, although men do not now fight for their wives, and this 

 form of selection has passed away, yet during manhood, they gen- 

 erally undergo a severe struggle in order to maintain themselves 

 and their families; and this will tend to keep up or even increase 

 their mental powers, and, as a consequence, the present inequality 

 between the sexes.^" 



Voice and Mxisical Powers. ■ — In some species of Quadrumana 

 there is a great difference between the adult sexes, in the power 

 of their voices and in the development of the vocal organs; and 



^ Maudsley, 'Mind and Body,' p. 31. 



^ An observation by Vogt bears on this subject: he says, "It is a 

 "remarkable circumstance, that the difference between the sexes, as 

 "regards the cranial cavity, increases with the development of the 

 "race, so that the male European excels much more the female, than 

 "the negro the negress. Welcker confirms this statement of Huschke 

 "from his measurements of negro and German skulls." But Vogt ad- 

 mits ('Lectures on Man,' Eng. translat. 1864, p. 81) that more observa- 

 tions are requisite on this point. 



