Lastly, in the Baboon family, the adult male of _Cynocephalus hamadryas_

differs from the female not only by his immense mane, but slightly in

the colour of the hair and of the naked callosities. In the drill

(_Cynocephalus leucophus_) the females and young are much

paler-coloured, with less green, than the adult males. No other member

of the whole class of mammals is coloured in so extraordinary a manner

as the adult male mandrill (_Cynocephalus mormon_). The face at this age

becomes of a fine blue, with the ridge and tip of the nose of the most

brilliant red. According to some authors the face is also marked with

whitish stripes, and is shaded in parts with black, but the colours

appear to be variable. On the forehead there is a crest of hair, and on

the chin a yellow beard. "Toutes les parties superieures de leurs

cuisses et le grand espace nu de leurs fesses sont egalement colores du

rouge le plus vif, avec un melange de bleu qui ne manque reellement pas

d'elegance."[362] When the animal is excited all the naked parts become

much more vividly tinted. Several authors have used the strongest

expressions in describing these resplendent colours, which they compare

with those of the most brilliant birds. Another most remarkable

peculiarity is that when the great canine teeth are fully developed,

immense protuberances of bone are formed on each cheek, which are deeply

furrowed longitudinally, and the naked skin over them is

brilliantly-coloured, as just described. (Fig. 67.) In the adult females

and in the young of both sexes these protuberances are scarcely

perceptible; and the naked parts are much less brightly coloured, the

face being almost black, tinged with blue. In the adult female, however,

the nose at certain regular intervals of time becomes tinted with red.

In all the cases hitherto given the male is more strongly or brightly

coloured than the female, and differs in a greater degree from the young

of both sexes. But as a reversed style of colouring is characteristic of

the two sexes with some few birds, so with the Rhesus monkey (_Macacus

rhesus_) the female has a large surface of naked skin round the tail, of

a brilliant carmine red, which periodically becomes, as I was assured by

the keepers in the Zoological Gardens, even more vivid, and her face is

also pale red. On the other hand with the adult male and with the young

of both sexes, as I saw in the Gardens, neither the naked skin at the

posterior end of the body, nor the face, shew a trace of red. It

appears, however, from some published accounts, that the male does

occasionally, or during certain seasons, exhibit some traces of the red.

Although he is thus less ornamented than the female, yet in the larger

size of his body, larger canine teeth, more developed whiskers, more

prominent superciliary ridges, he follows the common rule of the male

excelling the female.

I have now given all the cases known to me of a difference in colour

between the sexes of mammals. The colours of the female either do not

differ in a sufficient degree from those of the male, or are not of a

suitable nature, to afford her protection, and therefore cannot be

explained on this principle. In some, perhaps in many cases, the

differences may be the result of variations confined to one sex and

transmitted to the same sex, without any good having been thus gained,

and therefore without the aid of selection. We have instances of this

kind with our domesticated animals, as in the males of certain cats

being rusty-red, whilst the females are tortoise-shell coloured.

Analogous cases occur under nature; Mr. Bartlett has seen many black

varieties of the jaguar, leopard, vulpine phalanger and wombat; and he

is certain that all, or nearly all, were males. On the other hand, both

sexes of wolves, foxes, and apparently of American squirrels, are

occasionally born black. Hence it is quite possible that with some

mammals the blackness of the males, especially when this colour is

congenital, may simply be the result, without the aid of selection, of

one or more variations having occurred, which from the first were

sexually limited in their transmission. Nevertheless it can hardly be

admitted that the diversified, vivid, and contrasted colours of certain

quadrupeds, for instance of the above-mentioned monkeys and antelopes,

can thus be accounted for. We should bear in mind that these colours do

not appear in the male at birth, as in the case of most ordinary

variations, but only at or near maturity; and that unlike ordinary

variations, if the male be emasculated, they never appear or

subsequently disappear. It is on the whole a much more probable

conclusion that the strongly-marked colours and other ornamental

characters of male quadrupeds are beneficial to them in their rivalry

with other males, and have consequently been acquired through sexual

selection. The probability of this view is strengthened by the

differences in colour between the sexes occurring almost exclusively, as

may be observed by going through the previous details, in those groups

and subgroups of mammals, which present other and distinct secondary

sexual characters; these being likewise due to the action of sexual

selection.

Quadrupeds manifestly take notice of colour. Sir S. Baker repeatedly

observed that the African elephant and rhinoceros attacked with special

fury white or grey horses. I have elsewhere shewn[363] that half-wild

horses apparently prefer pairing with those of the same colour, and that

herds of fallow-deer of a different colour, though living together, have

long kept distinct. It is a more significant fact that a female zebra

would not admit the addresses of a male ass until he was painted so as

to resemble a zebra, and then, as John Hunter remarks, "she received him

very readily. In this curious fact, we have instinct excited by mere

colour, which had so strong an effect as to get the better of everything

else. But the male did not require this, the female being an animal

somewhat similar to himself, was sufficient to rouse him."[364]

In an early chapter we have seen that the mental powers of the higher

animals do not differ in kind, though so greatly in degree, from the

corresponding powers of man, especially of the lower and barbarous

races; and it would appear that even their taste for the beautiful is

not widely different from that of the Quadrumana. As the negro of Africa

raises the flesh on his face into parallel ridges "or cicatrices, high

above the natural surface, which unsightly deformities, are considered

great personal attractions;"[365]--as negroes, as well as savages in

many parts of the world, paint their faces with red, blue, white, or

black bars,--so the male mandrill of Africa appears to have acquired his

deeply-furrowed and gaudily-coloured face from having been thus rendered

attractive to the female. No doubt it is to us a most grotesque notion

that the posterior end of the body should have been coloured for the

sake of ornament even more brilliantly than the face; but this is really

not more strange than that the tails of many birds should have been

especially decorated.

With mammals we do not at present possess any evidence that the males

take pains to display their charms before the female; and the elaborate

manner in which this is performed by male birds, is the strongest

argument in favour of the belief that the females admire, or are

excited by, the ornaments and colours displayed before them. There is,

however, a striking parallelism between mammals and birds in all their

secondary sexual characters, namely in their weapons for fighting with

rival males, in their ornamental appendages, and in their colours. In

both classes, when the male differs from the female, the young of both

sexes almost always resemble each other, and in a large majority of

cases resemble the adult female. In both classes the male assumes the

characters proper to his sex shortly before the age for reproduction; if

emasculated he either never acquires such characters or subsequently

loses them. In both classes the change of colour is sometimes seasonal,

and the tints of the naked parts sometimes become more vivid during the

act of courtship. In both classes the male is almost always more vividly

or strongly coloured than the female, and is ornamented with larger

crests either of hair or feathers, or other appendages. In a few

exceptional cases the female in both classes is more highly ornamented

than the male. With many mammals, and at least in the case of one bird,

the male is more odoriferous than the female. In both classes the voice

of the male is more powerful than that of the female. Considering this

parallelism there can be little doubt that the same cause, whatever it

may be, has acted on mammals and birds; and the result, as far as

ornamental characters are concerned, may safely be attributed, as it

appears to me, to the long-continued preference of the individuals of

one sex for certain individuals of the opposite sex, combined with their

success in leaving a larger number of offspring to inherit their

superior attractions.

_Equal transmission of ornamental characters to both sexes._--With many

birds, ornaments, which analogy leads us to believe were primarily

acquired by the males, have been transmitted equally, or almost equally,

to both sexes; and we may now enquire how far this view may be extended

to mammals. With a considerable number of species, especially the

smaller kinds, both sexes have been coloured, independently of sexual

selection, for the sake of protection; but not, as far as I can judge,

in so many cases, nor in nearly so striking a manner as in most of the

lower classes. Audubon remarks that he often mistook the musk-rat,[366]

whilst sitting on the banks of a muddy stream, for a clod of earth, so

complete was the resemblance. The hare on her form is a familiar

instance of concealment through colour; yet this principle partly fails

in a closely-allied species, namely the rabbit, for as this animal runs

to its burrow, it is made conspicuous to the sportsman and no doubt to

all beasts of prey, by its upturned pure-white tail. No one has ever

doubted that the quadrupeds which inhabit snow-clad regions, have been

rendered white to protect them from their enemies, or to favour their

stealing on their prey. In regions where snow never lies long on the

ground a white coat would be injurious; consequently species thus

coloured are extremely rare in the hotter parts of the world. It

deserves notice that many quadrupeds, inhabiting moderately cold

regions, although they do not assume a white winter dress, become paler

during this season; and this apparently is the direct result of the

conditions to which they have long been exposed. Pallas[367] states that

in Siberia a change of this nature occurs with the wolf, two species of

Mustela, the domestic horse, the _Equus hemionus_, the domestic cow,

two species of antelopes, the musk-deer, the roe, the elk, and reindeer.

The roe, for instance, has a red summer and a greyish-white winter coat;

and the latter may perhaps serve as a protection to the animal whilst

wandering through the leafless thickets, sprinkled with snow and

hoar-frost. If the above named animals were gradually to extend their

range into regions perpetually covered with snow, their pale

winter-coats would probably be rendered, through natural selection,

whiter and whiter by degrees, until they became as white as snow.

[Illustration: Fig. 68. Tragelaphus scriptus, male (from the Knowsley

Menagerie).]

[Illustration: Fig. 69. Damalis pygarga, male (from the Knowsley

Menagerie).]

Although we must admit that many quadrupeds have received their present

tints as a protection, yet with a host of species, the colours are far

too conspicuous and too singularly arranged to allow us to suppose that

they serve for this purpose. We may take as an illustration certain

antelopes: when we see that the square white patch on the throat, the

white marks on the fetlocks, and the round black spots on the ears, are

all more distinct in the male of the _Portax picta_, than in the

female;--when we see that the colours are more vivid, that the narrow

white lines on the flank and the broad white bar on the shoulder are

more distinct in the male _Oreas derbyanus_ than in the female;--when we

see a similar difference between the sexes of the curiously-ornamented

_Tragelaphus scriptus_ (fig. 68),--we may conclude that these colours

and various marks have been at least intensified through sexual

selection. It is inconceivable that such colours and marks can be of any

direct or ordinary service to these animals; and as they have almost

certainly been intensified through sexual selection, it is probable that

they were originally gained through this same process, and then

partially transferred to the females. If this view be admitted, there

can be little doubt that the equally singular colours and marks of many

other antelopes, though common to both sexes, have been gained and

transmitted in a like manner. Both sexes, for instance, of the Koodoo

(_Strepsiceros Kudu_, fig. 62) have narrow white vertical lines on their

hinder flanks, and an elegant angular white mark on their foreheads.

Both sexes in the genus Damalis are very oddly coloured; in _D. pygarga_

the back and neck are purplish-red, shading on the flanks into black,

and abruptly separated from the white belly and a large white space on

the buttocks; the head is still more oddly coloured, a large oblong

white mask, narrowly-edged with black, covers the face up to the eyes

(fig. 69); there are three white stripes on the forehead, and the ears

are marked with white. The fawns of this species are of a uniform pale

yellowish-brown. In _Damalis albifrons_ the colouring of the head

differs from that in the last species in a single white stripe replacing

the three stripes, and in the ears being almost wholly white.[368] After

having studied to the best of my ability the sexual differences of

animals belonging to all classes, I cannot avoid the conclusion that the

curiously-arranged colours of many antelopes, though common to both

sexes, are the result of sexual selection primarily applied to the male.

The same conclusion may perhaps be extended to the tiger, one of the

most beautiful animals in the world, the sexes of which cannot be

distinguished by colour, even by the dealers in wild beasts. Mr. Wallace

believes[369] that the striped coat of the tiger "so assimilates with

the vertical stems of the bamboo, as to assist greatly in concealing him

from his approaching prey." But this view does not appear to me

satisfactory. We have some slight evidence that his beauty may be due to

sexual selection, for in two species of Felis analogous marks and

colours are rather brighter in the male than in the female. The zebra is

conspicuously striped, and stripes on the open plains of South Africa

cannot afford any protection. Burchell[370] in describing a herd says,

"their sleek ribs glistened in the sun, and the brightness and

regularity of their striped coats presented a picture of extraordinary

beauty, in which probably they are not surpassed by any other

quadruped." Here we have no evidence of sexual selection, as throughout

the whole group of the Equidae the sexes are identical in colour.

Nevertheless he who attributes the white and dark vertical stripes on

the flanks of various antelopes to sexual selection, will probably

extend the same view to the Royal Tiger and beautiful Zebra.

We have seen in a former chapter that when young animals belonging to

any class follow nearly the same habits of life with their parents, and

yet are coloured in a different manner, it may be inferred that they

have retained the colouring of some ancient and extinct progenitor. In

the family of pigs, and in the genus Tapir, the young are marked with

longitudinal stripes, and thus differ from every existing adult species

in these two groups. With many kinds of deer the young are marked with

elegant white spots, of which their parents exhibit not a trace. A

graduated series can be followed from the Axis deer, both sexes of which

at all ages and during all seasons are beautifully spotted (the male

being rather more strongly coloured than the female)--to species in

which neither the old nor the young are spotted. I will specify some of

the steps in this series. The Mantchurian deer (_Cervus Mantchuricus_)

is spotted during the whole year, but the spots are much plainer, as I

have seen in the Zoological Gardens, during the summer, when the general

colour of the coat is lighter, than during the winter, when the general

colour is darker and the horns are fully developed. In the hog-deer

(_Hyelaphus porcinus_) the spots are extremely conspicuous during the

summer when the coat is reddish-brown, but quite disappear during the

winter when the coat is brown.[371] In both these species the young are

spotted. In the Virginian deer the young are likewise spotted, and about

five per cent. of the adult animals living in Judge Caton's park, as I

am informed by him, temporarily exhibit at the period when the red

summer coat is being replaced by the bluish winter coat, a row of spots

on each flank, which are always the same in number, though very

variable in distinctness. From this condition there is but a very small

step to the complete absence of spots at all seasons in the adults; and

lastly, to their absence at all ages, as occurs with certain species.

From the existence of this perfect series, and more especially from the

fawns of so many species being spotted, we may conclude that the now

living members of the deer family are the descendants of some ancient

species which, like the Axis deer, was spotted at all ages and seasons.

A still more ancient progenitor probably resembled to a certain extent

the _Hyomoschus aquaticus_--for this animal is spotted, and the hornless

males have large exserted canine teeth, of which some few true deer

still retain rudiments. It offers, also, one of those interesting cases

of a form linking together two groups, as it is intermediate in certain

osteological characters between the pachyderms and ruminants, which were

formerly thought to be quite distinct.[372]

A curious difficulty here arises. If we admit that coloured spots and

stripes have been acquired as ornaments, how comes it that so many

existing deer, the descendants of an aboriginally spotted animal, and

all the species of pigs and tapirs, the descendants of an aboriginally

striped animal, have lost in their adult state their former ornaments? I

cannot satisfactorily answer this question. We may feel nearly sure that

the spots and stripes disappeared in the progenitors of our existing

species at or near maturity, so that they were retained by the young

and, owing to the law of inheritance at corresponding ages, by the young

of all succeeding generations. It may have been a great advantage to

the lion and puma from the open nature of the localities which they

commonly haunt, to have lost their stripes, and to have been thus

rendered less conspicuous to their prey; and if the successive

variations, by which this end was gained, occurred rather late in life,

the young would have retained their stripes, as we know to be the case.

In regard to deer, pigs, and tapirs, Fritz Mueller has suggested to me

that these animals by the removal through natural selection of their

spots or stripes would have been less easily seen by their enemies; and

they would have especially required this protection, as soon as the

carnivora increased in size and number during the Tertiary periods. This

may be the true explanation, but it is rather strange that the young

should not have been equally well protected, and still more strange that

with some species the adults should have retained their spots, either

partially or completely, during part of the year. We know, though we

cannot explain the cause, that when the domestic ass varies and becomes

reddish-brown, grey or black, the stripes on the shoulders and even on

the spine frequently disappear. Very few horses, except dun-coloured

kinds, exhibit stripes on any part of their bodies, yet we have good

reason to believe that the aboriginal horse was striped on the legs and

spine, and probably on the shoulders.[373] Hence the disappearance of

the spots and stripes in our adult existing deer, pigs, and tapirs, may

be due to a change in the general colour of their coats; but whether

this change was effected through sexual or natural selection, or was due

to the direct action of the conditions of life, or some other unknown

cause, it is impossible to decide. An observation made by Mr. Sclater

well illustrates our ignorance of the laws which regulate the

appearance and disappearance of stripes; the species of Asinus which

inhabit the Asiatic continent are destitute of stripes, not having even

the cross shoulder-stripe, whilst those which inhabit Africa are

conspicuously striped, with the partial exception of _A. taeniopus_,

which has only the cross shoulder-stripe and generally some faint bars

on the legs; and this species inhabits the almost intermediate region of

Upper Egypt and Abyssinia.[374]

[Illustration: Fig. 70. Head of Semnopithecus rubicundus. This and the

following figures (from Prof. Gervais) are given to shew the odd

arrangement and development of the hair on the head.]

[Illustration: Fig. 71. Head of Semnopithecus comatus.]

[Illustration: Fig. 72. Head of Cebus capucinus.]

[Illustration: Fig. 73. Head of Ateles marginatus.]

[Illustration: Fig. 74. Head of Cebus vellerosus.]

_Quadrumana._--Before we conclude, it will be advisable to add a few

remarks to those already given on the ornamental characters of monkeys.

In most of the species the sexes resemble each other in colour, but in

some, as we have seen, the males differ from the females, especially in

the colour of the naked parts of the skin, in the development of the

beard, whiskers, and mane. Many species are coloured either in so

extraordinary or beautiful a manner, and are furnished with such curious

and elegant crests of hair, that we can hardly avoid looking at these

characters as having been gained for the sake of ornament. The

accompanying figures (figs. 70 to 74) serve to shew the arrangement of

the hair on the face and head in several species. It is scarcely

conceivable that these crests of hair and the strongly-contrasted

colours of the fur and skin can be the result of mere variability

without the aid of selection; and it is inconceivable that they can be

of any ordinary use to these animals. If so, they have probably been

gained through sexual selection, though transmitted equally, or almost

equally, to both sexes. With many of the Quadrumana, we have additional

evidence of the action of sexual selection in the greater size and

strength of the males, and in the greater development of their canine

teeth, in comparison with the females.

With respect to the strange manner in which both sexes of some species

are coloured, and of the beauty of others, a few instances will suffice.

The face of the _Cercopithecus petaurista_ (fig. 75) is black, the

whiskers and beard being white, with a defined, round, white spot on the

nose, covered with short white hair, which gives to the animal an almost

ludicrous aspect. The _Semnopithecus frontatus_ likewise, has a blackish

face with a long black beard, and a large naked spot on the forehead of

a bluish-white colour. The face of _Macacus lasiotus_ is dirty

flesh-coloured, with a defined red spot on each cheek. The appearance of

_Cercocebus aethiops_ is grotesque, with its black face, white whiskers

and collar, chesnut head, and a large naked white spot over each eyelid.

In very many species, the beard, whiskers, and crests of hair round the

face are of a different colour from the rest of the head, and when

different, are always of a lighter tint,[375] being often pure white,

sometimes bright yellow, or reddish. The whole face of the South

American _Brachyurus calvus_ is of a "glowing scarlet hue;" but this

colour does not appear until the animal is nearly mature.[376] The

naked skin of the face differs wonderfully in colour in the various

species. It is often brown or flesh-colour, with parts perfectly white,

and often as black as that of the most sooty negro. In the Brachyurus

the scarlet tint is brighter than that of the most blushing Caucasian

damsel. It is sometimes more distinctly orange than in any Mongolian,

and in several species it is blue, passing into violet or grey. In all

the species known to Mr. Bartlett, in which the adults of both sexes

have strongly-coloured faces, the colours are dull or absent during

early youth. This likewise holds good with the Mandrill and Rhesus, in

which the face and the posterior parts of the body are brilliantly

coloured in one sex alone. In these latter cases we have every reason to

believe that the colours were acquired through sexual selection; and we

are naturally led to extend the same view to the foregoing species,

though both sexes when adult have their faces coloured in the same

manner.

[Illustration: Fig 75. Cercopithecus petaurista (from Brehm).]

Although, according to our taste, many kinds of monkeys are far from

beautiful, other species are universally admired for their elegant

appearance and bright colours. The _Semnopithecus nemaeus_, though

peculiarly coloured, is described as extremely pretty; the orange-tinted

face is surrounded by long whiskers of glossy whiteness, with a line of

chesnut-red over the eyebrows; the fur on the back is of a delicate

grey, with a square patch on the loins, the tail and the fore-arms all

of a pure white; a gorget of chesnut surmounts the chest; the hind

thighs are black, with the legs chesnut-red. I will mention only two

other monkeys on account of their beauty; and I have selected these as

they present slight sexual differences in colour, which renders it in

some degree probable that both sexes owe their elegant appearance to

sexual selection. In the moustache-monkey (_Cercopithecus cephus_) the

general colour of the fur is mottled-greenish, with the throat white; in

the male the end of the tail is chesnut; but the face is the most

ornamented part, the skin being chiefly bluish-grey, shading into a

blackish tint beneath the eyes, with the upper lip of a delicate blue,

clothed on the lower edge with a thin black moustache; the whiskers are

orange-coloured, with the upper part black, forming a band which extends

backwards to the ears, the latter being clothed with whitish hairs. In

the Zoological Society's Gardens I have often overheard visitors

admiring the beauty of another monkey, deservedly called _Cercopithecus

Diana_ (fig. 76); the general colour of the fur is grey; the chest and

inner surface of the forelegs are white; a large triangular defined

space on the hinder part of the back is rich chesnut; in the male the

inner sides of the thighs and the abdomen are delicate fawn-coloured,

and the top of the head is black; the face and ears are intensely black,

finely contrasted with a white transverse crest over the eyebrows and

with a long white peaked beard, of which the basal portion is

black.[377]

[Illustration: Fig. 76. Cercopithecus Diana (from Brehm).]

In these and many other monkeys, the beauty and singular arrangement of

their colours, and still more the diversified and elegant arrangement of

the crests and tufts of hair on their heads, force the conviction on my

mind that these characters have been acquired through sexual selection

exclusively as ornaments.

_Summary._--The law of battle for the possession of the female appears

to prevail throughout the whole great class of mammals. Most naturalists

will admit that the greater size, strength, courage, and pugnacity of

the male, his special weapons of offence, as well as his special means

of defence, have all been acquired or modified through that form of

selection which I have called sexual selection. This does not depend on

any superiority in the general struggle for life, but on certain

individuals of one sex, generally the male sex, having been successful

in conquering other males, and on their having left a larger number of

offspring to inherit their superiority, than the less successful males.

There is another and more peaceful kind of contest, in which the males

endeavour to excite or allure the females by various charms. This may be

effected by the powerful odours emitted by the males during the

breeding-season; the odoriferous glands having been acquired through

sexual selection. Whether the same view can be extended to the voice is

doubtful, for the vocal organs of the males may have been strengthened

by use during maturity, under the powerful excitements of love,

jealousy, or rage, and transmitted to the same sex. Various crests,

tufts, and mantles of hair, which are either confined to the male, or

are more developed in this sex than in the females, seem in most cases

to be merely ornamental, though they sometimes serve as a defence

against rival males. There is even reason to suspect that the branching

horns of stags, and the elegant horns of certain antelopes, though

properly serving as weapons of offence or of defence, have been partly

modified for the sake of ornament.

When the male differs in colour from the female he generally exhibits

darker and more strongly-contrasted tints. We do not in this class meet

with the splendid red, blue, yellow, and green colours, so common with

male birds and many other animals. The naked parts, however, of certain

Quadrumana must be excepted; for such parts, often oddly situated, are

coloured in some species in the most brilliant manner. The colours of

the male in other cases may be due to simple variation, without the aid

of selection. But when the colours are diversified and strongly

pronounced, when they are not developed until near maturity, and when

they are lost after emasculation, we can hardly avoid the conclusion

that they have been acquired through sexual selection for the sake of

ornament, and have been transmitted exclusively, or almost exclusively,

to the same sex. When both sexes are coloured in the same manner, and

the colours are conspicuous or curiously arranged, without being of the

least apparent use as a protection, and especially when they are

associated with various other ornamental appendages, we are led by

analogy to the same conclusion, namely, that they have been acquired

through sexual selection, although transmitted to both sexes. That

conspicuous and diversified colours, whether confined to the males or

common to both sexes, are as a general rule associated in the same

groups and subgroups with other secondary sexual characters, serving

for war or for ornament, will be found to hold good if we look back to

the various cases given in this and the last chapter.

The law of the equal transmission of characters to both sexes, as far as

colour and other ornaments are concerned, has prevailed far more

extensively with mammals than with birds; but in regard to weapons, such

as horns and tusks, these have often been transmitted either

exclusively, or in a much higher degree to the males than to the

females. This is a surprising circumstance, for as the males generally

use their weapons as a defence against enemies of all kinds, these

weapons would have been of service to the female. Their absence in this

sex can be accounted for, as far as we can see, only by the form of

inheritance which has prevailed. Finally with quadrupeds the contest

between the individuals of the same sex, whether peaceful or bloody, has

with the rarest exceptions been confined to the males; so that these

have been modified through sexual selection, either for fighting with

each other or for alluring the opposite sex, far more commonly than the

females.

CHAPTER XIX.

SECONDARY SEXUAL CHARACTERS OF MAN.

Differences between man and woman--Causes of such differences

and of certain characters common to both sexes--Law of

battle--Differences in mental powers--and voice--On the

influence of beauty in determining the marriages of

mankind--Attention paid by savages to ornaments--Their ideas

of beauty in woman--The tendency to exaggerate each natural

peculiarity.

With mankind the differences between the sexes are greater than in most

species of Quadrumana, but not so great as in some, for instance, the

mandrill. Man on an average is considerably taller, heavier, and

stronger than woman, with squarer shoulders and more plainly-pronounced

muscles. Owing to the relation which exists between muscular development

and the projection of the brows,[378] the superciliary ridge is

generally more strongly marked in man than in woman. His body, and

especially his face, is more hairy, and his voice has a different and

more powerful tone. In certain tribes the women are said, whether truly

I know not, to differ slightly in tint from the men; and with Europeans,

the women are perhaps the more brightly coloured of the two, as may be

seen when both sexes have been equally exposed to the weather.

Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman, and has a

more inventive genius. His brain is absolutely larger, but whether

relatively to the larger size of his body, in comparison with that of

woman, has not, I believe been fully ascertained. In woman the face is

rounder; the jaws and the base of the skull smaller; the outlines of her

body rounder, in parts more prominent; and her pelvis is broader than in

man;[379] but this latter character may perhaps be considered rather as

a primary than a secondary sexual character. She comes to maturity at an

earlier age than man.

As with animals of all classes, so with man, the distinctive characters

of the male sex are not fully developed until he is nearly mature; and

if emasculated they never appear. The beard, for instance, is a

secondary sexual character, and male children are beardless, though at

an early age they have abundant hair on their heads. It is probably due

to the rather late appearance in life of the successive variations, by

which man acquired his masculine characters, that they are transmitted

to the male sex alone. Male and female children resemble each other

closely, like the young of so many other animals in which the adult

sexes differ; they likewise resemble the mature female much more

closely, than the mature male. The female, however, ultimately assumes

certain distinctive characters, and in the formation of her skull, is

said to be intermediate between the child and the man.[380] Again, as

the young of closely allied though distinct species do not differ nearly

so much from each other as do the adults, so it is with the children of

the different races of man. Some have even maintained that

race-differences cannot be detected in the infantile skull.[381] In

regard to colour, the newborn negro child is reddish nut-brown, which

soon becomes slaty-grey; the black colour being fully developed within a

year in the Sudan, but not until three years in Egypt. The eyes of the

negro are at first blue, and the hair chesnut-brown rather than black,

being curled only at the ends. The children of the Australians

immediately after birth are yellowish-brown, and become dark at a later

age. Those of the Guaranys of Paraguay are whitish-yellow, but they

acquire in the course of a few weeks the yellowish-brown tint of their

parents. Similar observations have been made in other parts of

America.[382]

I have specified the foregoing familiar differences between the male and

female sex in mankind, because they are curiously the same as in the

Quadrumana. With these animals the female is mature at an earlier age

than the male; at least this is certainly the case with the _Cebus

azarae_.[383] With most of the species the males are larger and much

stronger than the females, of which fact the gorilla offers a well-known

instance. Even in so trifling a character as the greater prominence of

the superciliary ridge, the males of certain monkeys differ from the

females,[384] and agree in this respect with mankind. In the gorilla and

certain other monkeys, the cranium of the adult male presents a

strongly-marked sagittal crest, which is absent in the female; and Ecker

found a trace of a similar difference between the two sexes in the

Australians.[385] With monkeys when there is any difference in the

voice, that of the male is the more powerful. We have seen that certain

male monkeys, have a well-developed beard, which is quite deficient, or

much less developed in the female. No instance is known of the beard,

whiskers, or moustache being larger in a female than in the male monkey.

Even in the colour of the beard there is a curious parallelism between

man and the Quadrumana, for when in man the beard differs in colour from

the hair of the head, as is often the case, it is, I believe, invariably

of a lighter tint, being often reddish. I have observed this fact in

England, and Dr. Hooker, who attended to this little point for me in

Russia, found no exception to the rule. In Calcutta, Mr. J. Scott, of

the Botanic Gardens, was so kind as to observe with care the many races

of men to be seen there, as well as in some other parts of India,

namely, two races in Sikhim, the Bhoteas, Hindoos, Burmese, and Chinese.

Although most of these races have very little hair on the face, yet he

always found that when there was any difference in colour between the

hair of the head and the beard, the latter was invariably of a lighter

tint. Now with monkeys, as has already been stated, the beard frequently

differs in a striking manner in colour from the hair of the head, and in

such cases it is invariably of a lighter hue, being often pure white,

sometimes yellow or reddish.[386]

In regard to the general hairyness of the body, the women in all races

are less hairy than the men, and in some few Quadrumana the under side

of the body of the female is less hairy than that of the male.[387]

Lastly, male monkeys, like men, are bolder and fiercer than the females.

They lead the troop, and when there is danger, come to the front. We

thus see how close is the parallelism between the sexual differences of

man and the Quadrumana. With some few species, however, as with certain

baboons, the gorilla and orang, there is a considerably greater

difference between the sexes, in the size of the canine teeth, in the

development and colour of the hair, and especially in the colour of the

naked parts of the skin, than in the case of mankind.

The secondary sexual characters of man are all highly variable, even

within the limits of the same race or sub-species; and they differ much

in the several races. These two rules generally hold good throughout the

animal kingdom. In the excellent observations made on board the

_Novara_,[388] the male Australians were found to exceed the females by

only 65 millim. in height, whilst with the Javanese the average excess

was 218 millim., so that in this latter race the difference in height

between the sexes is more than thrice as great as with the Australians.

The numerous measurements of various other races, with respect to

stature, the circumference of the neck and chest, and the length of the

back-bone and arms, which were carefully made, nearly all shewed that

the males differed much more from each other than did the females. This

fact indicates that, as far as these characters are concerned, it is the

male which has been chiefly modified, since the races diverged from

their common and primeval source.

The development of the beard and the hairiness of the body differ

remarkably in the men belonging to distinct races, and even to different

families in the same race. We Europeans see this amongst ourselves. In

the island of St. Kilda, according to Martin,[389] the men do not

acquire beards, which are very thin, until the age of thirty or upwards.

On the Europaeo-Asiatic continent, beards prevail until we pass beyond

India, though with the natives of Ceylon they are frequently absent, as

was noticed in ancient times by Diodorus.[390] Beyond India beards

disappear, as with the Siamese, Malays, Kalmucks, Chinese, and Japanese;

nevertheless the Ainos,[391] who inhabit the northernmost islands of the

Japan archipelago, are the most hairy men in the world. With negroes the

beard is scanty or absent, and they have no whiskers; in both sexes the

body is almost destitute of fine down.[392] On the other hand, the

Papuans of the Malay archipelago, who are nearly as black as negroes,

possess well-developed beards.[393] In the Pacific Ocean the inhabitants

of the Fiji archipelago have large bushy beards, whilst those of the

not-distant archipelagoes of Tonga and Samoa are beardless; but these

men belong to distinct races. In the Ellice group all the inhabitants

belong to the same race; yet on one island alone, namely Nunemaya, "the

men have splendid beards;" whilst on the other islands "they have, as a

rule, a dozen straggling hairs for a beard."[394]

Throughout the great American continent the men may be said to be

beardless; but in almost all the tribes a few short hairs are apt to

appear on the face, especially during old age. With the tribes of North

America, Catlin estimates that eighteen out of twenty men are completely

destitute by nature of a beard; but occasionally there may be seen a

man, who has neglected to pluck out the hairs at puberty, with a soft

beard an inch or two in length. The Guaranys of Paraguay differ from all

the surrounding tribes in having a small beard, and even some hair on

the body, but no whiskers.[395] I am informed by Mr. D. Forbes, who

particularly attended to this subject, that the Aymaras and Quechuas of

the Cordillera are remarkably hairless, yet in old age a few straggling

hairs occasionally appear on the chin. The men of these two tribes have

very little hair on the various parts of the body where hair grows

abundantly in Europeans, and the women have none on the corresponding

parts. The hair on the head, however, attains an extraordinary length in

both sexes, often reaching almost to the ground; and this is likewise

the case with some of the N. American tribes. In the amount of hair, and

in the general shape of the body, the sexes of the American aborigines

do not differ from each other so much as with most other races of

mankind.[396] This fact is analogous with what occurs with some allied

monkeys; thus the sexes of the chimpanzee are not as different as those

of the gorilla or orang.[397]

In the previous chapters we have seen that with mammals, birds, fishes,

insects, &c., many characters, which there is every reason to believe

were primarily gained through sexual selection by one sex alone, have

been transferred to both sexes. As this same form of transmission has

apparently prevailed to a large extent with mankind, it will save much

useless repetition if we consider the characters peculiar to the male

sex together with certain other characters common to both sexes.

_Law of Battle._--With barbarous nations, for instance with the

Australians, the women are the constant cause of war both between the

individuals of the same tribe and between distinct tribes. So no doubt

it was in ancient times; "nam fuit ante Helenam mulier teterrima belli

causa." With the North American Indians, the contest is reduced to a

system. That excellent observer, Hearne,[398] says:--"It has ever been

the custom among these people for the men to wrestle for any woman to

whom they are attached; and, of course, the strongest party always

carries off the prize. A weak man, unless he be a good hunter, and

well-beloved, is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a stronger man

thinks worth his notice. This custom prevails throughout all the tribes,

and causes a great spirit of emulation among their youth, who are upon

all occasions, from their childhood, trying their strength and skill in

wrestling." With the Guanas of South America, Azara states that the men

rarely marry till twenty or more years old, as before that age they

cannot conquer their rivals.

Other similar facts could be given; but even if we had no evidence on

this head, we might feel almost sure, from the analogy of the higher

Quadrumana,[399] that the law of battle had prevailed with man during

the early stages of his development. The occasional appearance at the

present day of canine teeth which project above the others, with traces

of a diastema or open space for the reception of the opposite canines,

is in all probability a case of reversion to a former state, when the

progenitors of man were provided with these weapons, like so many

existing male Quadrumana. It was remarked in a former chapter that as

man gradually became erect, and continually used his hands and arms for

fighting with sticks and stones, as well as for the other purposes of

life, he would have used his jaws and teeth less and less. The jaws,

together with their muscles, would then have become reduced through

disuse, as would the teeth through the not well understood principles of

correlation and the economy of growth; for we everywhere see that parts

which are no longer of service are reduced in size. By such steps the

original inequality between the jaws and teeth in the two sexes of

mankind would ultimately have been quite obliterated. The case is almost

parallel with that of many male Ruminants, in which the canine teeth

have been reduced to mere rudiments, or have disappeared, apparently in

consequence of the development of horns. As the prodigious difference

between the skulls of the two sexes in the Gorilla and Orang, stands in

close relation with the development of the immense canine teeth in the

males, we may infer that the reduction of the jaws and teeth in the

early male progenitors of man led to a most striking and favourable

change in his appearance.

There can be little doubt that the greater size and strength of man, in

comparison with woman, together with his broader shoulders, more

developed muscles, rugged outline of body, his greater courage and

pugnacity, are all due in chief part to inheritance from some early male

progenitor, who, like the existing anthropoid apes, was thus

characterised. These characters will, however, have been preserved or

even augmented during the long ages whilst man was still in a barbarous

condition, by the strongest and boldest men having succeeded best in the

general struggle for life, as well as in securing wives, and thus having

left a large number of offspring. It is not probable that the greater

strength of man was primarily acquired through the inherited effects of

his having worked harder than woman for his own subsistence and that of

his family; for the women in all barbarous nations are compelled to

work at least as hard as the men. With civilised people the arbitrament

of battle for the possession of the women has long ceased; on the other

hand, the men, as a general rule, have to work harder than the women for

their mutual subsistence; and thus their greater strength will have been

kept up.

_Difference in the Mental Powers of the two Sexes._--With respect to

differences of this nature between man and woman, it is probable that

sexual selection has played a very important part. I am aware that some

writers doubt whether there is any inherent difference; but this is at

least probable from the analogy of the lower animals which present other

secondary sexual characters. No one will dispute that the bull differs

in disposition from the cow, the wild-boar from the sow, the stallion

from the mare, and, as is well known to the keepers of menageries, the

males of the larger apes from the females. Woman seems to differ from

man in mental disposition, chiefly in her greater tenderness and less

selfishness; and this holds good even with savages, as shewn by a

well-known passage in Mungo Park's Travels, and by statements made

by many other travellers. Woman, owing to her maternal instincts,

displays these qualities towards her infants in an eminent degree;

therefore it is likely that she should often extend them towards her

fellow-creatures. Man is the rival of other men; he delights in

competition, and this leads to ambition which passes too easily into

selfishness. These latter qualities seem to be his natural and

unfortunate birthright. It is generally admitted that with woman the

powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are

more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these

faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past

and lower state of civilisation.

The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is

shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up,

than woman can attain--whether requiring deep thought, reason, or

imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists

were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting,

sculpture, music,--comprising composition and performance, history,

science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the

two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of

the deviation of averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his

work on 'Hereditary Genius,' that if men are capable of decided eminence

over women in many subjects, the average standard of mental power in man

must be above that of woman.

The half-human male progenitors of man, and men in a savage state, have

struggled together during many generations for the possession of the

females. But mere bodily strength and size would do little for victory,

unless associated with courage, perseverance, and determined energy.

With social animals, the young males have to pass through many a contest

before they win a female, and the older males have to retain their

females by renewed battles. They have, also, in the case of man, to

defend their females, as well as their young, from enemies of all kinds,

and to hunt for their joint subsistence. But to avoid enemies, or to

attack them with success, to capture wild animals, and to invent and

fashion weapons, requires the aid of the higher mental faculties,

namely, observation, reason, invention, or imagination. These various

faculties will thus have been continually put to the test, and selected

during manhood; they will, moreover, have been strengthened by use

during this same period of life. Consequently, in accordance with the

principle often alluded to, we might expect that they would at least

tend to be transmitted chiefly to the male offspring at the

corresponding period of manhood.

Now, when two men are put into competition, or a man with a woman, who

possess every mental quality in the same perfection, with the exception

that the one has higher energy, perseverance, and courage, this one will

generally become more eminent, whatever the object may be, and will gain

the victory.[400] He may be said to possess genius--for genius has been

declared by a great authority to be patience; and patience, in this

sense, means unflinching, undaunted perseverance. But this view of

genius is perhaps deficient; for without the higher powers of the

imagination and reason, no eminent success in many subjects can be

gained. But these latter as well as the former faculties will have been

developed in man, partly through sexual selection,--that is, through the

contest of rival males, and partly through natural selection,--that is,

from success in the general struggle for life; and as in both cases the

struggle will have been during maturity, the characters thus gained will

have been transmitted more fully to the male than to the female

offspring. Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman. It is,

indeed, fortunate that the law of the equal transmission of characters

to both sexes has commonly prevailed throughout the whole class of

mammals; otherwise it is probable that man would have become as

superior in mental endowment to woman, as the peacock is in ornamental

plumage to the peahen.

It must be borne in mind that the tendency in characters acquired at a

late period of life by either sex, to be transmitted to the same sex at

the same age, and of characters acquired at an early age to be

transmitted to both sexes, are rules which, though general, do not

always hold good. If they always held good, we might conclude (but I am

here wandering beyond my proper bounds) that the inherited effects of

the early education of boys and girls would be transmitted equally to

both sexes; so that the present inequality between the sexes in mental

power could not be effaced by a similar course of early training; nor

can it have been caused by their dissimilar early training. In order

that woman should reach the same standard as man, she ought, when nearly

adult, to be trained to energy and perseverance, and to have her reason

and imagination exercised to the highest point; and then she would

probably transmit these qualities chiefly to her adult daughters. The

whole body of women, however, could not be thus raised, unless during

many generations the women who excelled in the above robust virtues were

married, and produced offspring in larger numbers than other women. As

before remarked with respect to bodily strength, although men do not now

fight for the sake of obtaining wives, and this form of selection has

passed away, yet they generally have to undergo, during manhood, a

severe struggle in order to maintain themselves and their families; and

this will tend to keep up or even increase their mental powers, and, as

a consequence, the present inequality between the sexes.[401]

_Voice and Musical Powers._--In some species of Quadrumana there is a

great difference between the adult sexes, in the power of the voice and

in the development of the vocal organs; and man appears to have

inherited this difference from his early progenitors. His vocal cords

are about one-third longer than in woman, or than in boys; and

emasculation produces the same effect on him as on the lower animals,

for it "arrests that prominent growth of the thyroid, &c., which

accompanies the elongation of the cords."[402] With respect to the cause

of this difference between the sexes, I have nothing to add to the

remarks made in the last chapter on the probable effects of the

long-continued use of the vocal organs by the male under the excitement

of love, rage, and jealousy. According to Sir Duncan Gibb,[403] the

voice differs in the different races of mankind; and with the natives of

Tartary, China, &c., the voice of the male is said not to differ so much

from that of the female, as in most other races.

The capacity and love for singing or music, though not a sexual

character in man, must not here be passed over. Although the sounds

emitted by animals of all kinds serve many purposes, a strong case can

be made out, that the vocal organs were primarily used and perfected in

relation to the propagation of the species. Insects and some few spiders

are the lowest animals which voluntarily produce any sound; and this is

generally effected by the aid of beautifully constructed stridulating

organs, which are often confined to the males alone. The sounds thus

produced consist, I believe in all cases, of the same note, repeated

rhythmically;[404] and this is sometimes pleasing even to the ears of

man. Their chief, and in some cases exclusive use appears to be either

to call or to charm the opposite sex.

The sounds produced by fishes are said in some cases to be made only by

the males during the breeding season. All the air-breathing Vertebrata

necessarily possess an apparatus for inhaling and expelling air, with a

pipe capable of being closed at one end. Hence when the primeval members

of this class were strongly excited and their muscles violently

contracted, purposeless sounds would almost certainly have been

produced; and these, if they proved in any way serviceable, might

readily have been modified or intensified by the preservation of

properly adapted variations. The Amphibians are the lowest Vertebrates

which breathe air; and many of these animals, namely, frogs and toads,

possess vocal organs, which are incessantly used during the

breeding-season, and which are often more highly developed in the male

than in the female. The male alone of the tortoise utters a noise, and

this only during the season of love. Male alligators roar or bellow

during the same season. Every one knows how largely birds use their

vocal organs as a means of courtship; and some species likewise perform

what may be called instrumental music.

In the class of Mammals, with which we are here more particularly

concerned, the males of almost all the species use their voices during

the breeding-season much more than at any other time; and some are

absolutely mute excepting at this season. Both sexes of other species,

or the females alone, use their voices as a love-call. Considering these

facts, and that the vocal organs of some quadrupeds are much more

largely developed in the male than in the female, either permanently or

temporarily during the breeding season; and considering that in most of

the lower classes the sounds produced by the males, serve not only to

call but to excite or allure the female, it is a surprising fact that we

have not as yet any good evidence that these organs are used by male

mammals to charm the females. The American _Mycetes caraya_ perhaps

forms an exception, as does more probably one of those apes which come

nearer to man, namely, the _Hylobates agilis_. This gibbon has an

extremely loud but musical voice. Mr. Waterhouse states,[405] "It

appeared to me that in ascending and descending the scale, the intervals

were always exactly half-tones; and I am sure that the highest note was

the exact octave to the lowest. The quality of the notes is very

musical; and I do not doubt that a good violinist would be able to give

a correct idea of the gibbon's composition, excepting as regards its

loudness." Mr. Waterhouse then gives the notes. Professor Owen, who is

likewise a musician, confirms the foregoing statement, and remarks that

this gibbon "alone of brute mammals may be said to sing." It appears to

be much excited after its performance. Unfortunately its habits have

never been closely observed in a state of nature; but from the analogy

of almost all other animals, it is highly probable that it utters its

musical notes especially during the season of courtship.

The perception, if not the enjoyment, of musical cadences and of rhythm

is probably common to all animals, and no doubt depends on the common

physiological nature of their nervous systems. Even Crustaceans, which

are not capable of producing any voluntary sound, possess certain

auditory hairs, which have been seen to vibrate when the proper musical

notes are struck.[406] It is well known that some dogs howl when hearing

particular tones. Seals apparently appreciate music, and their fondness

for it "was well known to the ancients, and is often taken advantage of

by the hunters at the present day."[407] With all those animals, namely

insects, amphibians, and birds, the males of which during the season of

courtship incessantly produce musical notes or mere rhythmical sounds,

we must believe that the females are able to appreciate them, and are

thus excited or charmed; otherwise the incessant efforts of the males

and the complex structures often possessed exclusively by them would be

useless.

With man song is generally admitted to be the basis or origin of

instrumental music. As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of

producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in

reference to his ordinary habits of life, they must be ranked amongst

the most mysterious with which he is endowed. They are present, though

in a very rude and as it appears almost latent condition, in men of all

races, even the most savage; but so different is the taste of the

different races, that our music gives not the least pleasure to savages,

and their music is to us hideous and unmeaning. Dr. Seemann, in some

interesting remarks on this subject,[408] "doubts whether even amongst

the nations of Western Europe, intimately connected as they are by close

and frequent intercourse, the music of the one is interpreted in the

same sense by the others. By travelling eastwards we find that there is

certainly a different language of music. Songs of joy and

dance-accompaniments are no longer, as with us, in the major keys, but

always in the minor." Whether or not the half-human progenitors of man

possessed, like the before-mentioned gibbon, the capacity of producing,

and no doubt of appreciating, musical notes, we have every reason to

believe that man possessed these faculties at a very remote period, for

singing and music are extremely ancient arts. Poetry, which may be

considered as the offspring of song, is likewise so ancient that many

persons have felt astonishment that it should have arisen during the

earliest ages of which we have any record.

The musical faculties, which are not wholly deficient in any race, are

capable of prompt and high development, as we see with Hottentots and

Negroes, who have readily become excellent musicians, although they do

not practise in their native countries anything that we should esteem as

music. But there is nothing anomalous in this circumstance: some species

of birds which never naturally sing, can without much difficulty be

taught to perform; thus the house-sparrow has learnt the song of a

linnet. As these two species are closely allied, and belong to the order

of Insessores, which includes nearly all the singing-birds in the world,

it is quite possible or probable that a progenitor of the sparrow may

have been a songster. It is a much more remarkable fact that parrots,

which belong to a group distinct from the Insessores, and have

differently-constructed vocal organs, can be taught not only to speak,

but to pipe or whistle tunes invented by man, so that they must have

some musical capacity. Nevertheless it would be extremely rash to assume

that parrots are descended from some ancient progenitor which was a

songster. Many analogous cases could be advanced of organs and instincts

originally adapted for one purpose, having been utilised for some quite

distinct purpose.[409] Hence the capacity for high musical development,

which the savage races of man possess, may be due either to our

semi-human progenitors having practised some rude form of music, or

simply to their having acquired for some distinct purposes the proper

vocal organs. But in this latter case we must assume that they already

possessed, as in the above instance of the parrots, and as seems to

occur with many animals, some sense of melody.

Music affects every emotion, but does not by itself excite in us the

more terrible emotions of horror, rage, &c. It awakens the gentler

feelings of tenderness and love, which readily pass into devotion. It

likewise stirs up in us the sensation of triumph and the glorious ardour

for war. These powerful and mingled feelings may well give rise to the

sense of sublimity. We can concentrate, as Dr. Seemann observes, greater

intensity of feeling in a single musical note than in pages of writing.

Nearly the same emotions, but much weaker and less complex, are probably

felt by birds when the male pours forth his full volume of song, in

rivalry with other males, for the sake of captivating the female. Love

is still the commonest theme of our own songs. As Herbert Spencer

remarks, music "arouses dormant sentiments of which we had not conceived

the possibility, and do not know the meaning; or, as Richter says, tells

us of things we have not seen and shall not see."[410] Conversely, when

vivid emotions are felt and expressed by the orator or even in common

speech, musical cadences and rhythm are instinctively used. Monkeys also

express strong feelings in different tones--anger and impatience by

low,--fear and pain by high notes.[411] The sensations and ideas excited

in us by music, or by the cadences of impassioned oratory, appear from

their vagueness, yet depth, like mental reversions to the emotions and

thoughts of a long-past age.

All these facts with respect to music become to a certain extent

intelligible if we may assume that musical tones and rhythm were used by

the half-human progenitors of man, during the season of courtship, when

animals of all kinds are excited by the strongest passions. In this

case, from the deeply-laid principle of inherited associations, musical

tones would be likely to excite in us, in a vague and indefinite manner,

the strong emotions of a long-past age. Bearing in mind that the males

of some quadrumanous animals have their vocal organs much more developed

than in the females, and that one anthropomorphous species pours forth a

whole octave of musical notes and may be said to sing, the suspicion

does not appear improbable that the progenitors of man, either the males

or females, or both sexes, before they had acquired the power of

expressing their mutual love in articulate language, endeavoured to

charm each other with musical notes and rhythm. So little is known about

the use of the voice by the Quadrumana during the season of love, that

we have hardly any means of judging whether the habit of singing was

first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind. Women are

generally thought to possess sweeter voices than men, and as far as this

serves as any guide we may infer that they first acquired musical powers

in order to attract the other sex.[412] But if so, this must have

occurred long ago, before the progenitors of man had become sufficiently

human to treat and value their women merely as useful slaves. The

impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when with his varied tones and

cadences he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little

suspects that he uses the same means by which, at an extremely remote

period, his half-human ancestors aroused each other's ardent passions,

during their mutual courtship and rivalry.

_On the influence of beauty in determining the marriages of

mankind._--In civilised life man is largely, but by no means

exclusively, influenced in the choice of his wife by external

appearance; but we are chiefly concerned with primeval times, and our

only means of forming a judgment on this subject is to study the habits

of existing semi-civilised and savage nations. If it can be shewn that

the men of different races prefer women having certain characteristics,

or conversely that the women prefer certain men, we have then to enquire

whether such choice, continued during many generations, would produce

any sensible effect on the race, either on one sex or both sexes; this

latter circumstance depending on the form of inheritance which prevails.

It will be well first to shew in some detail that savages pay the

greatest attention to their personal appearance.[413] That they have a

passion for ornament is notorious; and an English philosopher goes so

far as to maintain that clothes were first made for ornament and not for

warmth. As Professor Waitz remarks, "however poor and miserable man is,

he finds a pleasure in adorning himself." The extravagance of the naked

Indians of South America in decorating themselves is shewn "by a man of

large stature gaining with difficulty enough by the labour of a

fortnight to procure in exchange the _chica_ necessary to paint himself

red."[414] The ancient barbarians of Europe during the Reindeer period

brought to their caves any brilliant or singular objects which they

happened to find. Savages at the present day everywhere deck themselves

with plumes, necklaces, armlets, earrings, &c. They paint themselves in

the most diversified manner. "If painted nations," as Humboldt observes,

"had been examined with the same attention as clothed nations, it would

have been perceived that the most fertile imagination and the most

mutable caprice have created the fashions of painting, as well as those

of garments."

In one part of Africa the eyelids are coloured black; in another the

nails are coloured yellow or purple. In many places the hair is dyed of

various tints. In different countries the teeth are stained black, red,

blue, &c., and in the Malay Archipelago it is thought shameful to have

white teeth like those of a dog. Not one great country can be named,

from the Polar regions in the north to New Zealand in the south, in

which the aborigines do not tattoo themselves. This practice was

followed by the Jews of old and by the ancient Britons. In Africa some

of the natives tattoo themselves, but it is much more common to raise

protuberances by rubbing salt into incisions made in various parts of

the body; and these are considered by the inhabitants of Kordofan and

Darfur "to be great personal attractions." In the Arab countries no

beauty can be perfect until the cheeks "or temples have been

gashed."[415] In South America, as Humboldt remarks, "a mother would be

accused of culpable indifference towards her children, if she did not

employ artificial means to shape the calf of the leg after the fashion

of the country." In the Old and New World the shape of the skull was

formerly modified during infancy in the most extraordinary manner, as is

still the case in many places, and such deformities are considered

ornamental. For instance, the savages of Colombia[416] deem a much

flattened head "an essential point of beauty."

The hair is treated with especial care in various countries; it is

allowed to grow to full length, so as to reach to the ground, or is

combed into "a compact frizzled mop, which is the Papuan's pride and

glory."[417] In Northern Africa "a man requires a period of from eight

to ten years to perfect his coiffure." With other nations the head is

shaved, and in parts of South America and Africa even the eyebrows are

eradicated. The natives of the Upper Nile knock out the four front

teeth, saying that they do not wish to resemble brutes. Further south,

the Batokas knock out the two upper incisors, which, as Livingstone[418]

remarks, gives the face a hideous appearance, owing to the growth of the

lower jaw; but these people think the presence of the incisors most

unsightly, and on beholding some Europeans, cried out, "Look at the

great teeth!" The great chief Sebituani tried in vain to alter this

fashion. In various parts of Africa and in the Malay Archipelago the

natives file the incisor teeth into points like those of a saw, or

pierce them with holes, into which they insert studs.

As the face with us is chiefly admired for its beauty, so with savages

it is the chief seat of mutilation. In all quarters of the world the

septum, and more rarely the wings of the nose are pierced, with rings,

sticks, feathers, and other ornaments inserted into the holes. The ears

are everywhere pierced and similarly ornamented, and with the Botocudos

and Lenguas of South America the hole is gradually so much enlarged that

the lower edge touches the shoulder. In North and South America and in

Africa either the upper or lower lip is pierced; and with the Botocudos

the hole in the lower lip is so large that a disc of wood four inches in

diameter is placed in it. Mantegazza gives a curious account of the

shame felt by a South American native, and of the ridicule which he

excited, when he sold his _tembeta_,--the large coloured piece of wood

which is passed through the hole. In central Africa the women perforate

the lower lip and wear a crystal, which, from the movement of the

tongue, has "a wriggling motion indescribably ludicrous during

conversation." The wife of the chief of Latooka told Sir S. Baker[419]

that his "wife would be much improved if she would extract her four

front teeth from the lower jaw, and wear the long pointed polished

crystal in her under lip." Further south with the Makalolo, the upper

lip is perforated, and a large metal and bamboo ring, called a _pelele_,

is worn in the hole. "This caused the lip in one case to project two

inches beyond the tip of the nose; and when the lady smiled the

contraction of the muscles elevated it over the eyes. 'Why do the women

wear these things?' the venerable chief, Chinsurdi, was asked. Evidently

surprised at such a stupid question, he replied, 'For beauty! They are

the only beautiful things women have; men have beards, women have none.

What kind of a person would she be without the pelele? She would not be

a woman at all with a mouth like a man, but no beard.'" [420]

Hardly any part of the body, which can be unnaturally modified, has

escaped. The amount of suffering thus caused must have been wonderfully

great, for many of the operations require several years for their

completion, so that the idea of their necessity must be imperative. The

motives are various; the men paint their bodies to make themselves

appear terrible in battle; certain mutilations are connected with

religious rites; or they mark the age of puberty, or the rank of the

man, or they serve to distinguish the tribes. As with savages the same

fashions prevail for long periods,[421] mutilations, from whatever cause

first made, soon come to be valued as distinctive marks. But

self-adornment, vanity, and the admiration of others, seem to be the

commonest motives. In regard to tattooing, I was told by the

missionaries in New Zealand, that when they tried to persuade some girls

to give up the practice, they answered, "We must just have a few lines

on our lips; else when we grow old we shall be so very ugly." With the

men of New Zealand, a most capable judge[422] says, "to have fine

tattooed faces was the great ambition of the young, both to render

themselves attractive to the ladies, and conspicuous in war." A star

tattooed on the forehead and a spot on the chin are thought by the

women in one part of Africa to be irresistible attractions.[423] In

most, but not all parts of the world, the men are more highly ornamented

than the women, and often in a different manner; sometimes, though

rarely, the women are hardly at all ornamented. As the women are made by

savages to perform the greatest share of the work, and as they are not

allowed to eat the best kinds of food, so it accords with the

characteristic selfishness of man that they should not be allowed to

obtain, or to use, the finest ornaments. Lastly it is a remarkable fact,

as proved by the foregoing quotations, that the same fashions in

modifying the shape of the head, in ornamenting the hair, in painting,

tattooing, perforating the nose, lips, or ears, in removing or filing

the teeth, &c., now prevail and have long prevailed in the most distant

quarters of the world. It is extremely improbable that these practices

which are followed by so many distinct nations are due to tradition from

any common source. They rather indicate the close similarity of the mind

of man, to whatever race he may belong, in the same manner as the almost

universal habits of dancing, masquerading, and making rude pictures.

Having made these preliminary remarks on the admiration felt by savages

for various ornaments, and for deformities most unsightly in our eyes,

let us see how far the men are attracted by the appearance of their

women, and what are their ideas of beauty. As I have heard it maintained

that savages are quite indifferent about the beauty of their women,

valuing them solely as slaves, it may be well to observe that this

conclusion does not at all agree with the care which the women take in

ornamenting themselves, or with their vanity. Burchell[424] gives an

amusing account of a Bushwoman, who used so much grease, red ochre, and

shining powder, "as would have ruined any but a very rich husband." She

displayed also "much vanity and too evident a consciousness of her

superiority." Mr. Winwood Reade informs me that the negroes of the West

Coast often discuss the beauty of their women. Some competent observers

have attributed the fearfully common practice of infanticide partly to

the desire felt by the women to retain their good looks.[425] In several

regions the women wear charms and love-philters to gain the affections

of the men; and Mr. Brown enumerates four plants used for this purpose

by the women of North-Western America.[426]

Hearne,[427] who lived many years with the American Indians, and who was

an excellent observer, says, in speaking of the women, "Ask a Northern

Indian what is beauty, and he will answer, a broad flat face, small

eyes, high cheek-bones, three or four broad black lines across each

cheek, a low forehead, a large broad chin, a clumsy hook nose, a tawny

hide, and breasts hanging down to the belt." Pallas, who visited the

northern parts of the Chinese empire, says "those women are preferred

who have the Mandschu form; that is to say, a broad face, high

cheek-bones, very broad noses, and enormous ears;"[428] and Vogt remarks

that the obliquity of the eye, which is proper to the Chinese and

Japanese, is exaggerated in their pictures for the purpose, as "it

seems, of exhibiting its beauty, as contrasted with the eye of the

red-haired barbarians." It is well known, as Huc repeatedly remarks,

that the Chinese of the interior think Europeans hideous with their

white skins and prominent noses. The nose is far from being too

prominent, according to our ideas, in the natives of Ceylon; yet "the

Chinese in the seventh century, accustomed to the flat features of the

Mogul races, were surprised at the prominent noses of the Cingalese; and

Thsang described them as having 'the beak of a bird, with the body of a

man.'"

Finlayson, after minutely describing the people of Cochin China, says

that their rounded heads and faces are their chief characteristics; and,

he adds, "the roundness of the whole countenance is more striking in the

women, who are reckoned beautiful in proportion as they display this

form of face." The Siamese have small noses with divergent nostrils, a

wide mouth, rather thick lips, a remarkably large face, with very high

and broad cheek-bones. It is, therefore, not wonderful that "beauty,

according to our notion is a stranger to them. Yet they consider their

own females to be much more beautiful than those of Europe."[429]

It is well known that with many Hottentot women the posterior part of

the body projects in a wonderful manner; they are steatopygous; and Sir

Andrew Smith is certain that this peculiarity is greatly admired by the

men.[430] He once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was

so immensely developed behind, that when seated on level ground she

could not rise, and had to push herself along until she came to a slope.

Some of the women in various negro tribes are similarly characterised;

and, according to Burton, the Somal men "are said to choose their wives

by ranging them in a line, and by picking her out who projects farthest

_a tergo_. Nothing can be more hateful to a negro than the opposite

form."[431]

With respect to colour, the negroes rallied Mungo Park on the whiteness

of his skin and the prominence of his nose, both of which they

considered as "unsightly and unnatural conformations." He in return

praised the glossy jet of their skins and the lovely depression of their

noses; this they said was "honey-mouth," nevertheless they gave him

food. The African Moors, also, "knitted their brows and seemed to

shudder" at the whiteness of his skin. On the eastern coast, the negro

boys when they saw Burton, cried out "Look at the white man; does he not

look like a white ape?" On the western coast, as Mr. Winwood Reade

informs me, the negroes admire a very black skin more than one of a

lighter tint. But their horror of whiteness may be partly attributed,

according to this same traveller, to the belief held by most negroes

that demons and spirits are white.

The Banyai of the more southern part of the continent are negroes, but

"a great many of them are of a light coffee-and-milk colour, and,

indeed, this colour is considered handsome throughout the whole

country;" so that here we have a different standard of taste. With the

Kafirs, who differ much from negroes, "the skin, except among the

tribes near Delagoa Bay, is not usually black, the prevailing colour

being a mixture of black and red, the most common shade being chocolate.

Dark complexions, as being most common are naturally held in the highest

esteem. To be told that he is light-coloured, or like a white man, would

be deemed a very poor compliment by a Kafir. I have heard of one

unfortunate man who was so very fair that no girl would marry him." One

of the titles of the Zulu king is "You who are black."[432] Mr. Galton,

in speaking to me about the natives of S. Africa, remarked that their

ideas of beauty seem very different from ours; for in one tribe two

slim, slight, and pretty girls were not admired by the natives.

Turning to other quarters of the world; in Java, a yellow, not a white

girl, is considered, according to Madame Pfeiffer, a beauty. A man of

Cochin-China "spoke with contempt of the wife of the English Ambassador,

that she had white teeth like a dog, and a rosy colour like that of

potato-flowers." We have seen that the Chinese dislike our white skin,

and that the N. Americans admire "a tawny hide." In S. America, the

Yura-caras, who inhabit the wooded, damp slopes of the eastern

Cordillera, are remarkably pale-coloured, as their name in their own

language expresses; nevertheless they consider European women as very

inferior to their own.[433]

In several of the tribes of North America the hair on the head grows to

a wonderful length; and Catlin gives a curious proof how much this is

esteemed, for the chief of the Crows was elected to this office from

having the longest hair of any man in the tribe, namely ten feet and

seven inches. The Aymaras and Quechuas of S. America, likewise have very

long hair; and this, as Mr. D. Forbes informs me, is so much valued for

the sake of beauty, that cutting it off was the severest punishment

which he could inflict on them. In both halves of the continent the

natives sometimes increase the apparent length of their hair by weaving

into it fibrous substances. Although the hair on the head is thus

cherished, that on the face is considered by the North American Indians

"as very vulgar," and every hair is carefully eradicated. This practice

prevails throughout the American continent from Vancouver's Island in

the north to Tierra del Fuego in the south. When York Minster, a Fuegian

on board the "Beagle" was taken back to his country, the natives told

him he ought to pull out the few short hairs on his face. They also

threatened a young missionary, who was left for a time with them, to

strip him naked, and pluck the hairs from his face and body, yet he was

far from a hairy man. This fashion is carried to such an extreme that

the Indians of Paraguay eradicate their eyebrows and eyelashes, saying

that they do not wish to be like horses.[434]

It is remarkable that throughout the world the races which are almost

completely destitute of a beard dislike hairs on the face and body, and

take pains to eradicate them. The Kalmucks are beardless, and they are

well known, like the Americans, to pluck out all straggling hairs; and

so it is with the Polynesians, some of the Malays, and the Siamese. Mr.

Veitch states that the Japanese ladies "all objected to our whiskers,

considering them very ugly, and told us to cut them off, and be like

Japanese men." The New Zealanders are beardless; they carefully pluck

out the hairs on the face, and have a saying that "There is no woman for

a hairy man."[435]

On the other hand, bearded races admire and greatly value their beards;

among the Anglo-Saxons every part of the body, according to their laws,

had a recognised value; "the loss of the beard being estimated at twenty

shillings, while the breaking of a thigh was fixed at only twelve."[436]

In the East men swear solemnly by their beards. We have seen that

Chinsurdi, the chief of the Makalolo in Africa, evidently thought that

beards were a great ornament. With the Fijians in the Pacific the beard

is "profuse and bushy, and is his greatest pride;" whilst the

inhabitants of the adjacent archipelagoes of Tonga and Samoa are

"beardless, and abhor a rough chin." In one island alone of the Ellice

group "the men are heavily bearded, and not a little proud

thereof."[437]

We thus see how widely the different races of man differ in their taste

for the beautiful. In every nation sufficiently advanced to have made

effigies of their gods or of their deified rulers, the sculptors no

doubt have endeavoured to express their highest ideal of beauty and

grandeur.[438] Under this point of view it is well to compare in our

mind the Jupiter or Apollo of the Greeks with the Egyptian or Assyrian

statues; and these with the hideous bas-reliefs on the ruined buildings

of Central America.

I have met with very few statements opposed to the above conclusion. Mr.

Winwood Reade, however, who has had ample opportunities for observation,

not only with the negroes of the West Coast of Africa, but with those of

the interior who have never associated with Europeans, is convinced that

their ideas of beauty are _on the whole_ the same as ours. He has

repeatedly found that he agreed with negroes in their estimation of the

beauty of the native girls; and that their appreciation of the beauty of

European women corresponded with ours. They admire long hair, and use

artificial means to make it appear abundant; they admire also a beard,

though themselves very scantily provided. Mr. Reade feels doubtful what

kind of nose is most appreciated: a girl has been heard to say, "I do

not want to marry him, he has got no nose;" and this shews that a very

flat nose is not an object of admiration. We should, however, bear in

mind that the depressed and very broad noses and projecting jaws of the

negroes of the West Coast are exceptional types with the inhabitants of

Africa. Notwithstanding the foregoing statements, Mr. Reade does not

think it probable that negroes would ever prefer the "most beautiful

European woman, on the mere grounds of physical admiration, to a

good-looking negress."[439]

The truth of the principle, long ago insisted on by Humboldt,[440] that

man admires and often tries to exaggerate whatever characters nature may

have given him, is shewn in many ways. The practice of beardless races

extirpating every trace of a beard, and generally all the hairs on the

body, offers one illustration. The skull has been greatly modified

during ancient and modern times by many nations; and there can be little

doubt that this has been practised, especially in N. and S. America, in

order to exaggerate some natural and admired peculiarity. Many American

Indians are known to admire a head flattened to such an extreme degree

as to appear to us like that of an idiot. The natives on the

north-western coast compress the head into a pointed cone; and it is

their constant practice to gather the hair into a knot on the top of the

head, for the sake, as Dr. Wilson remarks, "of increasing the apparent

elevation of the favourite conoid form." The inhabitants of Arakhan

"admire a broad, smooth forehead, and in order to produce it, they

fasten a plate of lead on the heads of the newborn children." On the

other hand, "a broad, well-rounded occiput is considered a great

beauty" by the natives of the Fiji islands.[441]

As with the skull, so with the nose; the ancient Huns during the age of

Attila were accustomed to flatten the noses of their infants with

bandages, "for the sake of exaggerating a natural conformation." With

the Tahitians, to be called, _long-nose_ is considered as an insult, and

they compress the noses and foreheads of their children for the sake of

beauty. So it is with the Malays of Sumatra, the Hottentots, certain

Negroes, and the natives of Brazil.[442] The Chinese have by nature

unusually small feet;[443] and it is well known that the women of the

upper classes distort their feet to make them still smaller. Lastly,

Humboldt thinks that the American Indians prefer colouring their bodies

with red paint in order to exaggerate their natural tint; and until

recently European women added to their naturally bright colours by rouge

and white cosmetics; but I doubt whether many barbarous nations have had

any such intention in painting themselves.

In the fashions of our own dress we see exactly the same principle and

the same desire to carry every point to an extreme; we exhibit, also,

the same spirit of emulation. But the fashions of savages are far more

permanent than ours; and whenever their bodies are artificially

modified this is necessarily the case. The Arab women of the Upper Nile

occupy about three days in dressing their hair; they never imitate other

tribes, "but simply vie with each other in the superlativeness of their

own style." Dr. Wilson, in speaking of the compressed skulls of various

American races, adds, "such usages are among the least eradicable, and

long survive the shock of revolutions that change dynasties and efface

more important national peculiarities."[444] The same principle comes

largely into play in the art of selection; and we can thus understand,

as I have elsewhere explained,[445] the wonderful development of all the

races of animals and plants which are kept merely for ornament. Fanciers

always wish each character to be somewhat increased; they do not admire

a medium standard; they certainly do not desire any great and abrupt

change in the character of their breeds; they admire solely what they

are accustomed to behold, but they ardently desire to see each

characteristic feature a little more developed.

No doubt the perceptive powers of man and the lower animals are so

constituted that brilliant colours and certain forms, as well as

harmonious and rhythmical sounds, give pleasure and are called

beautiful; but why this should be so, we know no more than why certain

bodily sensations are agreeable and others disagreeable. It is certainly

not true that there is in the mind of man any universal standard of

beauty with respect to the human body. It is, however, possible that

certain tastes may in the course of time become inherited, though I know

of no evidence in favour of this belief; and if so, each race would

possess its own innate ideal standard of beauty. It has been argued[446]

that ugliness consists in an approach to the structure of the lower

animals, and this no doubt is true with the more civilised nations, in

which intellect is highly appreciated; but a nose twice as prominent, or

eyes twice as large as usual, would not be an approach in structure to

any of the lower animals, and yet would be utterly hideous. The men of

each race prefer what they are accustomed to behold; they cannot endure

any great change; but they like variety, and admire each characteristic

point carried to a moderate extreme.[447] Men accustomed to a nearly

oval face, to straight and regular features, and to bright colours,

admire, as we Europeans know, these points when strongly developed. On

the other hand, men accustomed to a broad face, with high cheek-bones, a

depressed nose, and a black skin, admire these points strongly

developed. No doubt characters of all kinds may easily be too much

developed for beauty. Hence a perfect beauty, which implies many

characters modified in a particular manner, will in every race be a

prodigy. As the great anatomist Bichat long ago said, if every one were

cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all

our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de Medici, we should

for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon

as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters in

our women a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.

CHAPTER XX.

SECONDARY SEXUAL CHARACTERS OF MAN--_continued_.

On the effects of the continued selection of women according

to a different standard of beauty in each race--On the causes

which interfere with sexual selection in civilised and savage

nations--Conditions favourable to sexual selection during

primeval times--On the manner of action of sexual selection

with mankind--On the women in savage tribes having some power

to choose their husbands--Absence of hair on the body, and

development of the beard--Colour of the skin--Summary.

We have seen in the last chapter that with all barbarous races

ornaments, dress, and external appearance are highly valued; and that

the men judge of the beauty of their women by widely different

standards. We must next inquire whether this preference and the

consequent selection during many generations of those women, which,

appear to the men of each race the most attractive, has altered the

character either of the females alone or of both sexes. With mammals the

general rule appears to be that characters of all kinds are inherited

equally by the males and females; we might therefore expect that with

mankind any characters gained through sexual selection by the females

would commonly be transferred to the offspring of both sexes. If any

change has thus been effected it is almost certain that the different

races will have been differently modified, as each has its own standard

of beauty.

With mankind, especially with savages, many causes interfere with the

action of sexual selection as far as the bodily frame is concerned.

Civilised men are largely attracted by the mental charms of women, by

their wealth, and especially by their social position; for men rarely

marry into a much lower rank of life. The men who succeed in obtaining

the more beautiful women, will not have a better chance of leaving a

long line of descendants than other men with plainer wives, with the

exception of 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 civilised 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 latter in life

largely depends on their intellectual powers and energy, or on the

fruits of these same powers in their forefathers.

There is, however, reason to believe that sexual selection has effected

something in certain civilised and semi-civilised nations. Many persons

are convinced, as it appears to me with justice, that the members of 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 standard of beauty,

than the middle classes; yet the middle classes are placed under equally

favourable conditions of life for the perfect development of the body.

Cook remarks that the superiority in personal appearance "which is

observable in the erees or nobles in all the other islands (of the

Pacific) is found in the Sandwich islands;" but this may be chiefly due

to their better food and manner of life.

The old traveller Chardin, in describing the Persians, says their "blood

is now highly refined by frequent intermixtures with the Georgians and

Circassians, two nations which surpass all the world in personal beauty.

There is hardly a man of rank in Persia who is not born of a Georgian or

Circassian mother." He adds that they inherit their beauty, "not from

their ancestors, for without the above mixture, the men of rank in

Persia, who are descendants of the Tartars, would be extremely

ugly."[448] Here is a more curious case: the priestesses who attended

the temple of Venus Erycina at San-Giuliano in Sicily, were selected for

their beauty out of the whole of Greece; they were not vestal virgins,

and Quatrefages,[449] who makes this statement, says that the women of

San-Giuliano are famous at the present day as the most beautiful in the

island, and are sought by artists as models. But it is obvious that the

evidence in the above cases is doubtful.

The following case, though relating to savages, is well worth giving

from its curiosity. Mr. Winwood Reade informs me that the Jollofs, a

tribe of negroes on the west coast of Africa, "are remarkable for their

uniformly fine appearance." A friend of his asked one of these men, "How

is it that every one whom I meet is so fine-looking, not only your men,

but your women?" The Jollof answered, "It is very easily explained: it

has always been our custom to pick out our worse-looking slaves and to

sell them." It need hardly be added that with all savages female slaves

serve as concubines. That this negro should have attributed, whether

rightly or wrongly, the fine appearance of his tribe, to the

long-continued elimination of the ugly women, is not so surprising as

it may at first appear; for I have elsewhere shewn[450] that negroes

fully appreciate the importance of selection in the breeding of their

domestic animals, and I could give from Mr. Reade additional evidence on

this head.

_On the Causes which prevent or check the Action of Sexual Selection

with Savages._--The chief causes are, firstly, so-called communal

marriages or promiscuous intercourse; secondly, infanticide, especially

of female infants; thirdly, early betrothals; and lastly, the low

estimation in which women are held, as mere slaves. These four points

must be considered in some detail.

It is obvious that as long as the pairing of man, or of any other

animal, is left to chance, with no choice exerted by either sex, there

can be no sexual selection; and no effect will be produced on the

offspring by certain individuals having had an advantage over others in

their courtship. Now it is asserted that there exist at the present day

tribes which practise what Sir J. Lubbock by courtesy calls communal

marriages; that is, all the men and women in the tribe are husbands and

wives to each other. The licentiousness of many savages is no doubt

astonishingly great, but it seems to me that more evidence is requisite

before we fully admit that their existing intercourse is absolutely

promiscuous. Nevertheless all those who have most closely studied the

subject,[451] and whose judgment is worth much more than mine, believe

that communal marriage was the original and universal form throughout

the world, including the intermarriage of brothers and sisters. The

indirect evidence in favour of this belief is extremely strong, and

rests chiefly on the terms of relationship which are employed between

the members of the same tribe, implying a connection with the tribe

alone, and not with either parent. But the subject is too large and

complex for even an abstract to be here given, and I will confine myself

to a few remarks. It is evident in the case of communal marriages, or

where the marriage-tie is very loose, that the relationship of the child

to its father cannot be known. But it seems almost incredible that the

relationship of the child to its mother should ever have been completely

ignored, especially as the women in most savage tribes nurse their

infants for a long time. Accordingly in many cases the lines of descent

are traced through the mother alone, to the exclusion of the father. But

in many other cases the terms employed express a connection with the

tribe alone, to the exclusion even of the mother. It seems possible that

the connection between the related members of the same barbarous tribe,

exposed to all sorts of danger, might be so much more important, owing

to the need of mutual protection and aid, than that between the mother

and her child, as to lead to the sole use of terms expressive of the

former relationships; but Mr. Morgan is convinced that this view of the

case is by no means sufficient.

The terms of relationship used in different parts of the world may be

divided, according to the author just quoted, into two great classes,

the classificatory and descriptive,--the latter being employed by us. It

is the classificatory system which so strongly leads to the belief that

communal and other extremely loose forms of marriage were originally

universal. But as far as I can see, there is no necessity on this ground

for believing in absolutely promiscuous intercourse. Men and women, like

many of the lower animals, might formerly have entered into strict

though temporary unions for each birth, and in this case nearly as much

confusion would have arisen in the terms of relationship as in the case

of promiscuous intercourse. As far as sexual selection is concerned, all

that is required is that choice should be exerted before the parents

unite, and it signifies little whether the unions last for life or only

for a season.

Besides the evidence derived from the terms of relationship, other lines

of reasoning indicate the former wide prevalence of communal marriage.

Sir J. Lubbock ingeniously accounts[452] for the strange and

widely-extended habit of exogamy,--that is, the men of one tribe always

taking wives from a distinct tribe,--by communism having been the

original form of marriage; so that a man never obtained a wife for

himself unless he captured her from a neighbouring and hostile tribe,

and then she would naturally have become his sole and valuable property.

Thus the practice of capturing wives might have arisen; and from the

honour so gained might ultimately have become the universal habit. We

can also, according to Sir J. Lubbock,[452] thus understand "the

necessity of expiation for marriage as an infringement of tribal rites,

since, according to old ideas, a man had no right to appropriate to

himself that which belonged to the whole tribe." Sir J. Lubbock further

gives a most curious body of facts shewing that in old times high honour

was bestowed on women who were utterly licentious; and this, as he

explains, is intelligible, if we admit that promiscuous intercourse was

the aboriginal and therefore long revered custom of the tribe.[453]

Although the manner of development of the marriage-tie is an obscure

subject, as we may infer from the divergent opinions on several points

between the three authors who have studied it most closely, namely, Mr.

Morgan, Mr. M'Lennan, and Sir J. Lubbock, yet from the foregoing and

several other lines of evidence it seems certain that the habit of

marriage has been gradually developed, and that almost promiscuous

intercourse was once extremely common throughout the world. Nevertheless

from the analogy of the lower animals, more particularly of those which

come nearest to man in the series, I cannot believe that this habit

prevailed at an extremely remote period, when man had hardly attained to

his present rank in the zoological scale. Man, as I have attempted to

shew, is certainly descended from some ape-like creature. With the

existing Quadrumana, as far as their habits are known, the males of some

species are monogamous, but live during only a part of the year with the

females, as seems to be the case with the Orang. Several kinds, as some

of the Indian and American monkeys, are strictly monogamous, and

associate all the year round with their wives. Others are polygamous, as

the Gorilla and several American species, and each family lives

separate. Even when this occurs, the families inhabiting the same

district are probably to a certain extent social: the Chimpanzee, for

instance, is occasionally met with in large bands. Again, other species

are polygamous, but several males, each with their own females, live

associated in a body, as with several species of Baboons.[454] We may

indeed conclude from what we know of the jealousy of all male

quadrupeds, armed, as many of them are, with special weapons for

battling with their rivals, that promiscuous intercourse in a state of

nature is extremely improbable. The pairing may not last for life, but

only for each birth; yet if the males which are the strongest and best

able to defend or otherwise assist their females and young offspring,

were to select the more attractive females, this would suffice for the

work of sexual selection.

Therefore, if we look far enough back in the stream of time, it is

extremely improbable that primeval men and women lived promiscuously

together. Judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, and

from most savages being polygamists, the most probable view is that

primeval man aboriginally lived in small communities, each with as many

wives as he could support and obtain, whom he would have jealously

guarded against all other men. Or he may have lived with several wives

by himself, like the Gorilla; for all the natives "agree that but one

adult male is seen in a band; when the young male grows up, a contest

takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out

the others, establishes himself as the head of the community."[455] The

younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at

last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding

within the limits of the same family.

Although savages are now extremely licentious, and although communal

marriages may formerly have largely prevailed, yet many tribes practise

some form of marriage, but of a far more lax nature than with civilised

nations. Polygamy, as just stated, is almost universally followed by the

leading men in every tribe. Nevertheless there are tribes, standing

almost at the bottom of the scale, which are strictly monogamous. This

is the case with the Veddahs of Ceylon: they have a saying, according to

Sir J. Lubbock,[456] "that death alone can separate husband and wife."

An intelligent Kandyan chief, of course a polygamist, "was perfectly

scandalized at the utter barbarism of living with only one wife, and

never parting until separated by death." It was, he said, "just like the

Wanderoo monkeys." Whether savages who now enter into some form of

marriage, either polygamous or monogamous, have retained this habit from

primeval times, or whether they have returned to some form of marriage,

after passing through a stage of promiscuous intercourse, I will not

pretend to conjecture.

_Infanticide._--This practice is now very common throughout the world,

and there is reason to believe that it prevailed much more extensively

during former times.[457] Barbarians find it difficult to support

themselves and their children, and it is a simple plan to kill their

infants. In South America some tribes, as Azara states, formerly

destroyed so many infants of both sexes, that they were on the point of

extinction. In the Polynesian Islands women have been known to kill from

four or five to even ten of their children; and Ellis could not find a

single woman who had not killed at least one. Wherever infanticide

prevails the struggle for existence will be in so far less severe, and

all the members of the tribe will have an almost equally good chance of

rearing their few surviving children. In most cases a larger number of

female than of male infants are destroyed, for it is obvious that the

latter are of most value to the tribe, as they will when grown up aid in

defending it, and can support themselves. But the trouble experienced by

the women in rearing children, their consequent loss of beauty, the

higher estimation set on them and their happier fate, when few in

number, are assigned by the women themselves, and by various observers,

as additional motives for infanticide. In Australia, where female

infanticide is still common, Sir G. Grey estimated the proportion of

native women to men as one to three; but others say as two to three. In

a village on the eastern frontier of India, Colonel Macculloch found not

a single female child.[458]

When, owing to female infanticide, the women of a tribe are few in

number, the habit of capturing wives from neighbouring tribes would

naturally arise. Sir J. Lubbock, however, as we have seen, attributes

the practice in chief part, to the former existence of communal

marriage, and to the men having consequently captured women from other

tribes to hold as their sole property. Additional causes might be

assigned, such as the communities being very small, in which case,

marriageable women would often be deficient. That the habit of capture

was most extensively practised during former times, even by the

ancestors of civilised nations, is clearly shewn by the preservation of

many curious customs and ceremonies, of which Mr. M'Lennan has given a

most interesting account. In our own marriages the "best man" seems

originally to have been the chief abettor of the bridegroom in the act

of capture. Now as long as men habitually procured their wives through

violence and craft, it is not probable that they would have selected the

more attractive women; they would have been too glad to have seized on

any woman. But as soon as the practice of procuring wives from a

distinct tribe was effected through barter, as now occurs in many

places, the more attractive women would generally have been purchased.

The incessant crossing, however, between tribe and tribe, which

necessarily follows from any form of this habit would have tended to

keep all the people inhabiting the same country nearly uniform in

character; and this would have greatly interfered with the power of

sexual selection in differentiating the tribes.

The scarcity of women, consequent on female infanticide, leads, also, to

another practice, namely polyandry, which is still common in several

parts of the world, and which formerly, as Mr. M'Lennan believes,

prevailed almost universally; but this latter conclusion is doubted by

Mr. Morgan and Sir J. Lubbock.[459] Whenever two or more men are

compelled to marry one woman, it is certain that all the women of the

tribe will get married, and there will be no selection by the men of the

more attractive women. But under these circumstances the women no doubt

will have the power of choice, and will prefer the more attractive men.

Azara, for instance, describes how carefully a Guana woman bargains for

all sorts of privileges, before accepting some one or more husbands; and

the men in consequence take unusual care of their personal

appearance.[460] The very ugly men would perhaps altogether fail in

getting a wife, or get one later in life, but the handsomer men,

although the most successful in obtaining wives, would not, as far as we

can see, leave more offspring to inherit their beauty than the less

handsome husbands of the same women.

_Early Betrothals and Slavery of Women._--With many savages it is the

custom to betroth the females whilst mere infants; and this would

effectually prevent preference being exerted on either side according to

personal appearance. But it would not prevent the more attractive women

from being afterwards stolen or taken by force from their husbands by

the more powerful men; and this often happens in Australia, America, and

other parts of the world. The same consequences with reference to sexual

selection would to a certain extent follow when women are valued almost

exclusively as slaves or beasts of burden, as is the case with most

savages. The men, however, at all times would prefer the handsomest

slaves according to their standard of beauty.

We thus see that several customs prevail with savages which would

greatly interfere with, or completely stop, the action of sexual

selection. On the other hand, the conditions of life to which savages

are exposed, and some of their habits, are favourable to natural

selection; and this always comes into play together with sexual

selection. Savages are known to suffer severely from recurrent famines;

they do not increase their food by artificial means; they rarely refrain

from marriage,[461] and generally marry young. Consequently they must be

subjected to occasional hard struggles for existence, and the favoured

individuals will alone survive.

Turning to primeval times when men had only doubtfully attained the rank

of manhood, they would probably have lived, as already stated, either as

polygamists or temporarily as monogamists. Their intercourse, judging

from analogy, would not then have been promiscuous. They would, no

doubt, have defended their females to the best of their power from

enemies of all kinds, and would probably have hunted for their

subsistence, as well as for that of their offspring. The most powerful

and able males would have succeeded best in the struggle for life and in

obtaining attractive females. At this early period the progenitors of

man, from having only feeble powers of reason, would not have looked

forward to distant contingencies. They would have been governed more by

their instincts and even less by their reason than are savages at the

present day. They would not at that period have partially lost one of

the strongest of all instincts, common to all the lower animals, namely

the love of their young offspring; and 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 primordial 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 with mankind._--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 who

possessed the most property, such as a larger number of dogs or other

animals, would have succeeded in rearing a greater average number of

offspring, than would the weaker, poorer and lower members of the same

tribes. There can, also, be no doubt that such men would generally have

been able to select the more attractive women. At present the chiefs of

nearly every tribe throughout the world succeed in obtaining more than

one wife. Until recently, as I hear from Mr. Mantell, almost every girl

in New Zealand, who was pretty, or promised to be pretty, was _tapu_ to

some chief. With the Kafirs, as Mr. C. Hamilton states,[462] "the chiefs

generally have the pick of the women for many miles round, and are most

persevering in establishing or confirming their privilege." We have seen

that each race has its own style of beauty, and we know that it is

natural to man to admire each characteristic point in his domestic

animals, dress, ornaments, and personal appearance, when carried a

little beyond the common standard. If then the several foregoing

propositions be admitted, and I cannot see that they are doubtful, it

would be an inexplicable circumstance, if the selection of the more

attractive women by the more powerful men of each tribe, who would rear

on an average a greater number of children, did not after the lapse of

many generations modify to a certain extent the character of the tribe.

With our domestic animals, when a foreign breed is introduced into a new

country, or when a native breed is long and carefully attended to,

either for use or ornament, it is found after several generations to

have undergone, whenever the means of comparison exist, a greater or

less amount of change. This follows from unconscious selection during a

long series of generations--that is, the preservation of the most

approved individuals--without any wish or expectation of such a result

on the part of the breeder. So again, if two careful breeders rear

during many years animals of the same family, and do not compare them

together or with a common standard, the animals are found after a time

to have become to the surprise of their owners slightly different.[463]

Each breeder has impressed, as Von Nathusius well expresses it, the

character of his own mind--his own taste and judgment--on his animals.

What reason, then, can be assigned why similar results should not follow

from the long-continued selection of the most admired women by those men

of each tribe, who were able to rear to maturity the greater number of

children? This would be unconscious selection, for an effect would be

produced, independently of any wish or expectation on the part of the

men who preferred certain women to others.

Let us suppose the members of a tribe, in which some form of marriage

was practised, to spread over an unoccupied continent; they would soon

split up into distinct hordes, which would be separated from each other

by various barriers, and still more effectually by the incessant wars

between all barbarous nations. The hordes would thus be exposed to

slightly different conditions and habits of life, and would sooner or

later come to differ in some small degree. As soon as this occurred,

each isolated tribe would form for itself a slightly different standard

of beauty;[464] and then unconscious selection would come into action

through the more powerful and leading savages preferring certain women

to others. Thus the differences between the tribes, at first very

slight, would gradually and inevitably be increased to a greater and

greater degree.

With animals in a state of nature, many characters proper to the males,

such as size, strength, special weapons, courage and pugnacity, have

been acquired through the law of battle. The semi-human progenitors of

man, like their allies the Quadrumana, will almost certainly have been

thus modified; and, as savages still fight for the possession of their

women, a similar process of selection has probably gone on in a greater

or less degree to the present day. Other characters proper to the males

of the lower animals, such as bright colours and various ornaments, have

been acquired by the more attractive males having been preferred by the

females. There are, however, exceptional cases in which the males,

instead of having been the selected, have been the selectors. We

recognise such cases by the females having been rendered more highly

ornamented than the males,--their ornamental characters having been

transmitted exclusively or chiefly to their female offspring. One such

case has been described in the order to which man belongs, namely, with

the Rhesus monkey.

Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman, and in the savage

state he keeps her in a far more abject state of bondage than does the

male of any other animal; therefore it is not surprising that he should

have gained the power of selection. Women are everywhere conscious of

the value of their beauty; and when they have the means, they take more

delight in decorating themselves with all sorts of ornaments than do

men. They borrow the plumes of male birds, with which nature decked this

sex in order to charm the females. As women have long been selected for

beauty, it is not surprising that some of the successive variations

should have been transmitted in a limited manner; and consequently that

women should have transmitted their beauty in a somewhat higher degree

to their female than to their male offspring. Hence women have become

more beautiful, as most persons will admit, than men. Women, however,

certainly transmit most of their characters, including beauty, to their

offspring of both sexes; so that the continued preference by the men of

each race of the more attractive women, according to their standard of

taste, would tend to modify in the same manner all the individuals of

both sexes belonging to the race.

With respect to the other form of sexual selection (which with the lower

animals is much the most common), namely, when the females are the

selectors, and accept only those males which excite or charm them most,

we have reason to believe that it formerly acted on the progenitors of

man. Man in all probability owes his beard, and perhaps some other

characters, to inheritance from an ancient progenitor who gained in this

manner his ornaments. But this form of selection may have occasionally

acted during later times; for in utterly barbarous tribes the women have

more power in choosing, rejecting, and tempting their lovers, or of

afterwards changing their husbands, than might have been expected. As

this is a point of some importance, I will give in detail such evidence

as I have been able to collect.

Hearne describes how a woman in one of the tribes of Arctic America

repeatedly ran away from her husband and joined a beloved man; and with

the Charruas of S. America, as Azara states, the power of divorce is

perfectly free. With the Abipones, when a man chooses a wife he bargains

with the parents about the price. But "it frequently happens that the

girl rescinds what has been agreed upon between the parents and the

bridegroom, obstinately rejecting the very mention of marriage." She

often runs away, hides herself, and thus eludes the bridegroom. In the

Fiji Islands the man seizes on the woman whom he wishes for his wife by

actual or pretended force; but "on reaching the home of her abductor,

should she not approve of the match, she runs to some one who can

protect her; if, however, she is satisfied, the matter is settled

forthwith." In Tierra del Fuego a young man first obtains the consent of

the parents by doing them some service, and then he attempts to carry

off the girl; "but if she is unwilling, she hides herself in the woods

until her admirer is heartily tired of looking for her, and gives up the

pursuit; but this seldom happens." With the Kalmucks there is a regular

race between the bride and bridegroom, the former having a fair start;

and Clarke "was assured that no instance occurs of a girl being caught,

unless she has a partiality to the pursuer." So with the wild tribes of

the Malay archipelago there is a similar racing match; and it appears

from M. Bourien's account, as Sir J. Lubbock remarks, that "the race 'is

not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' but to the young man

who has the good fortune to please his intended bride."

Turning to Africa: the Kafirs buy their wives, and girls are severely

beaten by their fathers if they will not accept a chosen husband; yet it

is manifest from many facts given by the Rev. Mr. Shooter, that they

have considerable power of choice. Thus very ugly, though rich men, have

been known to fail in getting wives. The girls, before consenting to be

betrothed, compel the men to shew themselves off, first in front and

then behind, and "exhibit their paces." They have been known to propose

to a man, and they not rarely run away with a favoured lover. With the

degraded bushwomen of S. Africa, "when a girl has grown up to womanhood

without having been betrothed, which, however, does not often happen,

her lover must gain her approbation, as well as that of the

parents."[465] Mr. Winwood Reade made inquiries for me with respect to

the negroes of Western Africa, and he informs me that "the women, at

least among the more intelligent Pagan tribes, have no difficulty in

getting the husbands whom they may desire, although it is considered

unwomanly to ask a man to marry them. They are quite capable of falling

in love, and of forming tender, passionate, and faithful attachments."

We thus see that with savages the women are not in quite so abject a

state in relation to marriage as has often been supposed. They can tempt

the men whom they prefer, and can sometimes reject those whom they

dislike, either before or after marriage. Preference on the part of the

women, steadily acting in any one direction, would ultimately affect the

character of the tribe; for the women would generally choose not merely

the handsomer men, according to their standard of taste, but those who

were at the same time best able to defend and support them. Such

well-endowed pairs would commonly rear a larger number of offspring than

the less well endowed. The same result would obviously follow in a still

more marked manner if there was selection on both sides; that is if the

more attractive, and at the same time more powerful men were to prefer,

and were preferred by, the more attractive women. And these two forms of

selection seem actually to have occurred, whether or not simultaneously,

with mankind, especially during the earlier periods of our long history.

We will now consider in a little more detail, relatively to sexual

selection, some of the characters which distinguish the several races of

man from each other and from the lower animals, namely, the more or less

complete absence of hair from the body and the colour of the skin. We

need say nothing about the great diversity in the shape of the features

and of the skull between the different races, as we have seen in the

last chapter how different is the standard of beauty in these respects.

These characters will therefore probably have been acted on through

sexual selection; but we have no means of judging, as far as I can see,

whether they have been acted on chiefly through the male or female side.

The musical faculties of man have likewise been already discussed.

_Absence of Hair on the Body, and its Development on the Face and

Head._--From the presence of the woolly hair or lanugo on the human

foetus, and of rudimentary hairs scattered over the body during

maturity, we may infer that man is descended from some animal which was

born hairy and remained so during life. The loss of hair is an

inconvenience and probably an injury to man even under a hot climate,

for he is thus exposed to sudden chills, especially during wet weather.

As Mr. Wallace remarks, the natives in all countries are glad to protect

their naked backs and shoulders with some slight covering. No one

supposes that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man,

so that his body cannot have been divested of hair through natural

selection.[466] Nor have we any grounds for believing, as shewn in a

former chapter, that this can be due to the direct action of the

conditions to which man has long been exposed, or that it is the result

of correlated development.

The absence of hair on the body is to a certain extent a secondary

sexual character; for in all parts of the world women are less hairy

than men. Therefore we may reasonably suspect that this is a character

which has been gained through sexual selection. We know that the faces

of several species of monkeys, and large surfaces at the posterior end

of the body in other species, have been denuded of hair; and this we may

safely attribute to sexual selection, for these surfaces are not only

vividly coloured, but sometimes, as with the male mandrill and female

rhesus, much more vividly in the one sex than in the other. As these

animals gradually reach maturity the naked surfaces, as I am informed by

Mr. Bartlett, grow larger, relatively to the size of their bodies. The

hair, however, appears to have been removed in these cases, not for the

sake of nudity, but that the colour of the skin should be more fully

displayed. So again with many birds the head and neck have been divested

of feathers through sexual selection, for the sake of exhibiting the

brightly-coloured skin.

As woman has a less hairy body than man, and as this character is common

to all races, we may conclude that our female semi-human progenitors

were probably first partially divested of hair; and that this occurred

at an extremely remote period before the several races had diverged from

a common stock. As our female progenitors gradually acquired this new

character of nudity, they must have transmitted it in an almost equal

degree to their young offspring of both sexes; so that its transmission,

as in the case of many ornaments with mammals and birds, has not been

limited either by age or sex. There is nothing surprising in a partial

loss of hair having been esteemed as ornamental by the ape-like

progenitors of man, for we have seen that with animals of all kinds

innumerable strange characters have been thus esteemed, and have

consequently been modified through sexual selection. Nor is it

surprising that a character in a slight degree injurious should have

been thus acquired; for we know that this is the case with the plumes of

some birds, and with the horns of some stags.

The females of certain anthropoid apes, as stated in a former chapter,

are somewhat less hairy on the under surface than are the males; and

here we have what might have afforded a commencement for the process of

denudation. With respect to the completion of the process through sexual

selection, it is well to bear in mind the New Zealand proverb, "there is

no woman for a hairy man." All who have seen photographs of the Siamese

hairy family will admit how ludicrously hideous is the opposite extreme

of excessive hairiness. Hence the king of Siam had to bribe a man to

marry the first hairy woman in the family, who transmitted this

character to her young offspring of both sexes.[467]

Some races are much more hairy than others, especially on the male side;

but it must not be assumed that the more hairy races, for instance

Europeans, have retained a primordial condition more completely than

have the naked races, such as the Kalmucks or Americans. It is a more

probable view that the hairiness of the former is due to partial

reversion, for characters which have long been inherited are always apt

to return. It does not appear that a cold climate has been influential

in leading to this kind of reversion; excepting perhaps with the

negroes, who have been reared during several generations, in the United

States,[468] and possibly with the Ainos, who inhabit the northern

islands of the Japan archipelago. But the laws of inheritance are so

complex than we can seldom understand their action. If the greater

hairiness of certain races be the result of reversion, unchecked by any

form of selection, the extreme variability of this character, even

within the limits of the same race, ceases to be remarkable.

With respect to the beard, if we turn to our best guide, namely the

Quadrumana, we find beards equally well developed in both sexes of many

species, but in others, either confined to the males, or more developed

in them than in the females. From this fact, and from the curious

arrangement, as well as the bright colours, of the hair about the heads

of many monkeys, it is highly probable, as before explained, that the

males first acquired their beards as an ornament through sexual

selection, transmitting them in most cases, in an equal or nearly equal

degree, to their offspring of both sexes. We know from Eschricht[469]

that with mankind, the female as well as the male foetus is furnished

with much hair on the face, especially round the mouth; and this

indicates that we are descended from a progenitor, of which both sexes

were bearded. It appears therefore at first sight probable that man has

retained his beard from a very early period, whilst woman lost her beard

at the same time when her body became almost completely divested of

hair. Even the colour of the beard with mankind seems to have been

inherited from an ape-like progenitor; for when there is any difference

in tint between the hair of the head and the beard, the latter is

lighter coloured in all monkeys and in man. There is less improbability

in the men of the bearded races having retained their beards from

primordial times, than in the case of the hair on the body; for with

those Quadrumana, in which the male has a larger beard than that of the

female, it is fully developed only at maturity, and the later stages of

development may have been exclusively transmitted to mankind. We should

then see what is actually the case, namely, our male children, before

they arrive at maturity, as destitute of beards as are our female

children. On the other hand the great variability of the beard within

the limits of the same race and in different races indicates that

reversion has come into action. However this may be, we must not

overlook the part which sexual selection may have played even during

later times; for we know that with savages, the men of the beardless

races take infinite pains in eradicating every hair from their faces, as

something odious, whilst the men of the bearded races feel the greatest

pride in their beards. The women, no doubt, participate in these

feelings, and if so sexual selection can hardly have failed to have

effected something in the course of later times.[470]

It is rather difficult to form a judgment how the long hair on our

heads became developed. Eschricht[471] states that in the human foetus

the hair on the face during the fifth month is longer than that on the

head; and this indicates that our semi-human progenitors were not

furnished with long tresses, which consequently must have been a late

acquisition. This is likewise indicated by the extraordinary difference

in the length of the hair in the different races; in the negro the hair

forms a mere curly mat; with us it is of great length, and with the

American natives it not rarely reaches to the ground. Some species of

Semnopithecus have their heads covered with moderately long hair, and

this probably serves as an ornament and was acquired through sexual

selection. The same view may be extended to mankind, for we know that

long tresses are now and were formerly much admired, as may be observed

in the works of almost every poet; St. Paul says, "if a woman have long

hair, it is a glory to her;" and we have seen that in North America a

chief was elected solely from the length of his hair.

_Colour of the Skin._--The best kind of evidence that the colour of the

skin has been modified through sexual selection is wanting in the case

of mankind; for the sexes do not differ in this respect, or only

slightly and doubtfully. On the other hand we know from many facts

already given that the colour of the skin is regarded by the men of all

races as a highly important element in their beauty; so that it is a

character which would be likely to be modified through selection, as has

occurred in innumerable instances with the lower animals. It seems at

first sight a monstrous supposition that the jet blackness of the negro

has been gained through sexual selection; but this view is supported by

various analogies, and we know that negroes admire their own blackness.

With mammals, when the sexes differ in colour, the male is often black

or much darker than the female; and it depends merely on the form of

inheritance whether this or any other tint shall be transmitted to both

sexes or to one alone. The resemblance of _Pithecia satanas_ with his

jet black skin, white rolling eyeballs, and hair parted on the top of

the head, to a negro in miniature, is almost ludicrous.

The colour of the face differs much more widely in the various kinds of

monkeys than it does in the races of man; and we have good reason to

believe that the red, blue, orange, almost white and black tints of

their skin, even when common to both sexes, and the bright colours of

their fur, as well as the ornamental tufts of hair about the head, have

all been acquired through sexual selection. As the newly-born infants of

the most distinct races do not differ nearly as much in colour as do the

adults, although their bodies are completely destitute of hair, we have

some slight indication that the tints of the different races were

acquired subsequently to the removal of the hair, which, as before

stated, must have occurred at a very early period.

_Summary._--We may conclude that the greater size, strength, courage,

pugnacity, and even energy of man, in comparison with the same qualities

in woman, were acquired during primeval times, and have subsequently

been augmented, chiefly through the contests of rival males for the

possession of the females. The greater intellectual vigour and power of

invention in man is probably due to natural selection combined with the

inherited effects of habit, for the most able men will have succeeded

best in defending and providing for 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 sweeter

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 conclude, 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 we 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 scientific precision. He who does not admit

this agency in the case of the lower animals, will properly 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 shewn that the races of man differ from

each other and from their nearest allies amongst the lower animals, in

certain characters which are of no service to them in their ordinary

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 prominence or depression of the nose, the colour 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 have been 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 during many generations as their wives the most strongly

characterised and therefore most attractive women. For my own part I

conclude that of all the causes which have led to the differences in

external appearance between the races of man, and to a certain extent

between man and the lower animals, sexual selection has been by far the

most efficient.

CHAPTER XXI.

GENERAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.

Main conclusion that man is descended from some lower

form--Manner of development--Genealogy of man--Intellectual

and moral faculties--Sexual selection--Concluding remarks.

A brief summary will here be sufficient to recall to the reader's mind

the more salient points in this work. Many of the views which have been

advanced are highly speculative, and some no doubt will prove erroneous;

but I have in every case given the reasons which have led me to one view

rather than to another. It seemed worth while to try how far the

principle of evolution would throw light on some of the more complex

problems in the natural history of man. False facts are highly injurious

to the progress of science, for they often long endure; but false views,

if supported by some evidence, do little harm, as every one takes a

salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one

path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same

time opened.

The main conclusion arrived at in this work, and now held by many

naturalists who are well competent to form a sound judgment, is that man

is descended from some less highly organised form. The grounds upon

which this conclusion rests will never be shaken, for the close

similarity between man and the lower animals in embryonic development,

as well as in innumerable points of structure and constitution, both of

high and of the most trifling importance,--the rudiments which he

retains, and the abnormal reversions to which he is occasionally

liable,--are facts which cannot be disputed. They have long been known,

but until recently they told us nothing with respect to the origin of

man. Now when viewed by the light of our knowledge of the whole organic

world, their meaning is unmistakeable. The great principle of evolution

stands up clear and firm, when these groups of facts are considered in

connection with others, such as the mutual affinities of the members of

the same group, their geographical distribution in past and present

times, and their geological succession. It is incredible that all these

facts should speak falsely. He who is not content to look, like a

savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer

believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation. He will be

forced to admit that the close resemblance of the embryo of man to that,

for instance, of a dog--the construction of his skull, limbs, and whole

frame, independently of the uses to which the parts may be put, on the

same plan with that of other mammals--the occasional reappearance of

various structures, for instance of several distinct muscles, which man

does not normally possess, but which are common to the Quadrumana--and a

crowd of analogous facts--all point in the plainest manner to the

conclusion that man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common

progenitor.

We have seen that man incessantly presents individual differences in all

parts of his body and in his mental faculties. These differences or

variations seem to be induced by the same general causes, and to obey

the same laws as with the lower animals. In both cases similar laws of

inheritance prevail. Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his

means of subsistence; consequently he is occasionally subjected to a

severe struggle for existence, and natural selection will have effected

whatever lies within its scope. A succession of strongly-marked

variations of a similar nature are by no means requisite; slight

fluctuating differences in the individual suffice for the work of

natural selection. We may feel assured that the inherited effects of the

long-continued use or disuse of parts will have done much in the same

direction with natural selection. Modifications formerly of importance,

though no longer of any special use, will be long inherited. When one

part is modified, other parts will change through the principle of

correlation, of which we have instances in many curious cases of

correlated monstrosities. Something may be attributed to the direct and

definite action of the surrounding conditions of life, such as abundant

food, heat, or moisture; and lastly, many characters of slight

physiological importance, some indeed of considerable importance, have

been gained through sexual selection.

No doubt man, as well as every other animal, presents structures, which

as far as we can judge with our little knowledge, are not now of any

service to him, nor have been so during any former period of his

existence, either in relation to his general conditions of life, or of

one sex to the other. Such structures cannot be accounted for by any

form of selection, or by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of

parts. We know, however, that many strange and strongly-marked

peculiarities of structure occasionally appear in our domesticated

productions, and if the unknown causes which produce them were to act

more uniformly, they would probably become common to all the individuals

of the species. We may hope hereafter to understand something about the

causes of such occasional modifications, especially through the study

of monstrosities: hence the labours of experimentalists, such as those

of M. Camille Dareste, are full of promise for the future. In the

greater number of cases we can only say that the cause of each slight

variation and of each monstrosity lies much more in the nature or

constitution of the organism, than in the nature of the surrounding

conditions; though new and changed conditions certainly play an

important part in exciting organic changes of all kinds.

Through the means just specified, aided perhaps by others as yet

undiscovered, man has been raised to his present state. But since he

attained to the rank of manhood, he has diverged into distinct races, or

as they may be more appropriately called sub-species. Some of these, for

instance the Negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had

been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would

undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species.

Nevertheless all the races agree in so many unimportant details of

structure and in so many mental peculiarities, that these can be

accounted for only through inheritance from a common progenitor; and a

progenitor thus characterised would probably have deserved to rank as

man.