Chap. XX. Summary on Man. 605 



Summary. — We may conclude that the greater size, strength, 

 courage, pugnacity, and energy of man, in comparison with 

 woman, were acquired during primeval times, and have subse- 

 quently been augmented, chiefly through the contests of rival 

 males for the possession of the females. The greater intellectual 

 vigour and power of invention in man is probably due to 

 natural selection, combined with the inherited effects of habit, 

 for the most able men will have succeeded best in defending and 

 providing for themselves and for their wives and offspring. As 

 far as the extreme intricacy of the subject permits us to judge, 

 it appears that our male ape-like progenitors acquired their 

 beards as an ornament to charm or excite the opposite sex, and 

 transmitted them only to their male oflfspring. The females 

 apparently first had their bodies denuded of hair, also as a 

 sexual ornament; but they transmitted this character almost 

 equally to both sexes. It is not improbable that the females 

 were modified in other respects for the same purpose and by the 

 same means ; so that women have acquired sweeter voices and 

 become more beautiful than men. 



It deserves attention that with mankind the conditions were 

 in many respects much more favourable for sexual selection, 

 during a very early period, when man had only just attained 

 to the rank of manhood, than during later times. For he would 

 then, as we may safely conclude, have been guided more by his 

 instinctive passions, and less by foresight or reason. He would 

 have jealously guarded his wife or wives. He would not have 

 practised infanticide ; nor valued his wives merely as useful 

 slaves ; nor have been betrothed to them during infancy. Hence 

 we may infer that the races of men were differentiated, as far 

 as sexual selection is concerned, in chief part at a very remote 

 epoch ; and this conclusion throws light on the remarkable fact 

 that at the mo&t ancient period, of which we have as yet any 

 record, the races of man had already come to differ nearly or 

 quite as much as they do at the present day. 



The views here advanced, on the part which sexual selection 

 has played in the history of man, want scientific precision. He 

 who does not admit this agency in the case of the lower animals, 

 will disregard all. that I have written in the later chapters 

 on man. We cannot positively say that this character, but not 

 that, has been thus modified ; it has, however, been shewn that 

 the races of man differ from each other aod from their nearest 

 allies, in certain characters which are of no service to them in 

 their daily habits of life, and which it is extremely probable 

 would have been modified through sexual selection. We have 

 Been that with the lowest savages the people of each tribe admire 



