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 régime. 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 Ellis 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 qualities 
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. 
