^4 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



into a much lower rank. Tlie men who succeed in obtain- 

 ing the more beautiful women will not have a better chance 

 of leaving a long line of descendants than other men with 

 plainer wives, save the few who bequeath their fortunes 

 according to primogeniture. With respect to the opposite 

 form of selection, namely, of the more attractive men by the 

 women, although in civilized nations women have free or 

 almost free choice, which is not the case with barbarous 

 races, yet their choice is largely influenced by the social 

 position and wealth of the men; and the success of the lat- 

 ter in life depends much on their intellectual powers and 

 energy, or on the fruits of these same powers in their fore- 

 fathers. No excuse is needed for treating this subject in 

 some detail; for, as the Grerman philosopher Schopenhauer 

 remarks, "the final aim of all love intrigues, be they comic 

 or tragic, is really of more importance than all other ends 

 in human life. What it all turns upon is nothing less than 

 the composition of the next generation. ... It is not the 

 weal or woe of any one individual, but that of the human 

 race to come, which is here at stake." ' 



There is, however, reason to believe that in certain civil- 

 ized and semi-civilized nations sexual selection has effected 

 something in modifying the bodily frame of some of the 

 members. Many persons are convinced, as it appears to 

 me with justice, that our aristocracy, including under this 

 term all wealthy families in which primogeniture has long 

 prevailed, from having chosen during many generations 

 from all classes the more beautiful women as their wives, 

 have become handsomer, according to the European stand- 

 ard, than the middle classes; yet the middle classes are 

 placed under equally favorable conditions of life for the 

 perfect development of the body. Cook rem&,rks that the 

 superiority in personal appearance "which is observable in 

 the erees or nobles in all the other islands (of the Pacific) 



' "Schopenhauer and Darwinism," in "Journal of Anthropology," Jan. 

 1812, p. 323. 



