The Theory of Sexual Selection. 40I 
Concluding Remarks. 
I will now conclude this chapter, and with it the 
present volume, by offering a few general remarks on 
what may be termed the philosophical relations of 
Darwinian doctrine to the facts of adaptation on the 
one hand, and to those of beauty on the other. Of 
course we are all aware that before the days of this 
doctrine the facts of adaptation in organic nature were 
taken to constitute the clearest possible evidence of 
special design, on account of the wonderful mechanisms 
which they everywhere displayed ; while the facts of 
beauty were taken as constituting no less conclusive 
evidence of the quality of such special design as 
beneficent, not to say artistic. But now that the 
Darwinian doctrine appears to have explained 
scientifically the former class of facts by its theory of 
natural selection, and the latter class of facts by its: 
theory of sexual selection, we may fitly conclude this 
brief exposition of the doctrine as a whole by consi- 
dering what influence such naturalistic explanations 
may fairly be taken to exercise upon the older, or 
super-naturalistic, interpretations. 
To begin with the facts of adaptation, we must 
first of all observe that the Darwinian doctrine is 
immediately concerned with these facts only in so far 
Mrs. Peckham’s work on Sexual Selection in Spiders, and furnishes 
appropriate descriptions. Therefore, while retaining the illustrations, 
I have withdiawn my own descriptions. 
Mr. Poulton has also in his book supplied a résemé of the arguments 
for and against the theory of sexual selection in general. Of course in 
nearly all respects this corresponds with the xészmé which is given in 
the foregoing pages; but I have left the latter as it was originally 
written, because all the critical part is reproduced verbatim from a 
review of Mr. Wallace’s Darwindsm, of a date still earlier than that of 
Mr. Poulton’s book—viz. Contemporary Review, August, 1889. 
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