THE SEXES, AND CRITICISM OF SEXUAL SELECTION. 27 



katabolic processes, the latter into male and female activities, — so 

 far with all physiologists, without exception or dispute/'^ Our 

 special theory lies, however, in suggesting the parallelism of the 

 two sets of processes, — the male reproduction is associated with 

 preponderating katabolism, and the female with relative anabol- 

 ism. In terms of this thesis, therefore, both primary and second- 

 ary sexual characters express the fundamental physiological bias 

 characteristic of either sex. Sexual selection resembles artificial 

 selection, but the female takes the place of the human breeder; it 

 resembles natural selection, but the selective females and the com- 

 bative males represent a role filled in the larger case by the foster- 

 ing or eliminating action of the environment. As a special case of 

 natural selection, Darwin's minor theory is open to the objection 

 of being teleological, i.e.^ of accounting for structures in terms of 

 a final advantage. It is quite open to the logical critic to urge, 

 as a few have done, that the structures to be explained have to 

 be accounted for before, as well as after, the stage when they 

 were developed enough to be useful. The origin, or in other 

 words the fundamental physiological import, of the structures, 

 must be explained before we have a complete or adequate theory 

 of organic evolution. 



Apart from this logical insufficiency, the theory of sexual 

 selection is open to many minor objections, with some of which 

 Darwin himself dealt, as is mentioned in the preceding historical 

 chapter. One detailed objection which seems serious may also 

 be urged. The evolution of coloured markings by selective pre- 

 ference carries with it the postulate of a certain level of aesthetic 

 taste and critical power in the female, and this not only very 

 high and very scrupulous as to details, but remaining permanent 

 as a standard of fashion from generation to generation, — large 

 assumptions all, and scarcely verifiable in human experience. 

 Yet we cannot suppose that Mr Darwin considered the human 

 female as peculiarly undeveloped. It is true, doubtless, that 



* The reader whose physiological studies may not have been so recent 

 as to faniiharise him with that conception of all physiological processes as 

 finding their ultimate expression in the metabolism (anabolism and 

 katabolism) of protoplasm, will easily place himself in a position to check 

 our argument (often indeed, we trust to carry our interpretation of sex into 

 still further detail) by starting from the exposition of this doctrine in Dr 

 Michael Foster's article, " Physiology," in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 

 or with Dr Burdon Sanderson's Presidential Address to Section D, British 

 Association, 1889. The essential conception will, however, become clearer 

 as we proceed (see pp. 89, 124). 



