| OCR Text |
Show 370 SEXUAL SELECTION: MAN. PART ]f. -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 ag~in, if two careful breeders rear during many years ammals of tho sa~e family, and do not compare them together or with a common standard tho animals are found after a ~ime to have becom~ to the surprise of their owners· slightly different.16 Each bre~dm· has impressed, ~s Von N athusius well expresses 1t., the character of h~s 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 oxpectation on the part of the men who preferred certain women ~o otl~ers. . Let us suppose the members of a tribe, m wluch some form of marriage was practised, to spread over an unoccupied continent ; they would soon split up intodistinct 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 J1abits 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 ; 17 and then un- 1a 'The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. p. 210-217. . . 11 An ingenious writer argues, from a comp::mson of the pwturcs ~f Raphael Rubens, and modern French artists, that the idea of beauty JS not nbs;lutcly the sumo even throughout Europe: see the 'Lives of llnydn and Mozart,' by :M. Bombet, English trauslat. p. 278. CHAP. XX. MANNER OF AC'l'ION. 371 conscious selection would come into action through the more powerful and leadiug 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, Rtrength, 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 sueh 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 docs the malo 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 2 B 2 |
