MAN— MODE OF SEXUAL SELECTION. 591 



or expectation on the part of the men who preferred certain women 

 to others. 



Let us suppose the members of a tribe, practicing some form 

 of marriage, to spread over an unoccupied continent; they would 

 soon split up into distinct hordes, separated from each other by 

 various barriers, and still more effectually by the incessant wars 

 between all barbarous nations. The hordes would thus be ex- 

 posed to slightly different conditions and habits of life, and would 

 sooner or later come to differ in some small degree. As soon 

 as this occurred, each isolated tribe would form for itself a slight- 

 ly different standard of beauty;'" and then unconscious selection 

 would come Into action through the more powerful and leading 

 men preferring certain women to others. Thus the differences be- 

 tween the tribes, at first very slight, would gradually and inevi- 

 tably be more or less increased. 



With animals in a state of nature, many characters proper to 

 the males, such as size, strength, special weapons, courage and 

 pugnacity, have been acquired through the law of battle. The 

 semi-human progenitors of man, like their allies the Quadrumana, 

 will almost certainly have been thus modified; and, as savages 

 still fight for the possession of their women, a similar process of 

 selection has probably gone on in a greater or less degree to the 

 present day. Other characters proper to the males of the lower 

 animals, such as bright colors and various ornaments, have been 

 acquired by the more attractive males having been preferred by 

 the females. There are, however, exceptional cases in which the 

 males are the selecters, instead of having been the selected. We 

 recognize such cases by the females being more highly orna- 

 mented than the males, — their ornamental characters having been 

 transmitted exclusively or chiefly to their female offspring. One 

 such case has been described in the order to which man belongs, 

 that of the Rhesus monkey. 



Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman, and in 

 the savage state he keeps her in a far more abject state of bond- 

 age, than does the male of any other animal; therefore it is not 

 surprising that he should have gained the power of selection. 

 Women are everywhere conscious of the value of their own beauty; 

 and when they have the means, they take more delight in decorat- 

 ing themselves with all sorts of ornaments than do men. They 

 borrow the plumes of male birds, with which nature has decked 

 this sex in order to charm the females. As women have long been 



" An ingenious writer arg-ues, from a comparison of the pictures of 

 Raphael, Rubens, and modern French artists, that the idea of beauty 

 is not absolutely the same even throughout Europe: see the 'Lives 

 of Haydn and Mozart," by Bombet (otherwise M. Beyle), English trans- 

 lat. p. 278. 



