SEXUAL SELECTION IN BELATION TO MAN 779 



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 practiced 

 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 re- 

 markable fact that at the most 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 shown that the races of man differ 

 from each other and 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 

 seen that with the lowest savages the people of each tribe 

 admire their own characteristic qualities — the shape of the 

 head and face, the squareness of the cheek-bones, the promi- 

 nence or depression of the nose, the color of the skin, the 

 length of the hair on the head, the absence of hair on 

 the face and body, or the presence of a great beard, and 

 so forth. Hence these and other such points could hardly 

 fail to be slowly and gradually exaggerated, from the more 

 powerful and able men in each tribe, who would succeed 

 in rearing the largest number of offspring, having selected 

 dnring many generations for their wives the most strongly 



