368 
SEXUAL SELECTION: MAN. 
Part II. 
consequently they would not have practised infanticide. 
There would have been no artificial scarcity of women, 
and polyandry would not have been followed; there 
would have been no early betrothals ; women would 
not have been valued as mere slaves ; both sexes, if the 
females as well as the males were permitted to exert 
any choice, would have chosen their partners, not for 
mental charms, or property, or social position, but almost 
solely from external appearance. All the adults would 
have married or paired, and all the offspring, as far as 
that was possible, would have been reared ; so that the 
struggle for existence would have been periodically 
severe to an extreme degree. Thus during these pri- 
mordial times all the conditions for sexual selection 
would have been much more favourable than at a later 
period, when man had advanced in his intellectual 
powers, but had retrograded in his instincts. Therefore, 
whatever influence sexual selection may have had in 
producing the differences between the races of man, and 
between man and the higher Quadrumana, this influence 
would have been much more powerful at a very remote 
period than at the present day. 
On the Manner of Action of Sexual Selection mth 
manJcind . — With primeval men under the favourable 
conditions just stated, and with those savages who at the 
present time enter into any marriage tie (but subject to 
greater or less interference according as the habits of 
female infanticide, early betrothals, &c., are more or 
less practised), sexual selection will probably have 
acted in the following manner. The strongest and most 
vigorous men,— those who could best defend and hunt 
for their families, and during later times the chiefs or 
head-men,— those who were provided with the best 
weapons and wdio possessed the most property, such as 
