Chap. XX. 
SUMMARY. 
383 
themselves, 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 to man as he now 
exists. The females apparently were first denuded of 
hair in like manner 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 through the 
same means ; so that women have acquired sw^eeter 
voices and become more beautiful than men. 
It deserves particular attention that with mankind 
all the conditions for sexual selection were much more 
favourable, 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 con- 
clude, have been guided more by his instinctive passions^ 
and less by foresight or reason. He would not then 
have been so utterly licentious as many savages now are ; 
and each male would have jealously guarded his wife or 
wives. He would not then 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 during a very 
remote epoch; and this conclusion throws light on the 
remarkable fact that at the most ancient period, of which 
w^e have as yet obtained 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 scien- 
tific precision. He wdio does not admit this agency in 
the case of the lower animals, will properly disregard 
