not after the lapse of many generations somewhat modify the character of
the tribe.
When a foreign breed of our domestic animals 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 a greater or less amount of change whenever the means of
comparison exist. 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 during many years two careful breeders rear
animals of the same family, and do not compare them together or with a
common standard, the animals are found to have become, to the surprise of
their owners, slightly different. (18. The 'Variation of Animals and
Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. pp. 210-217.) 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 the greatest 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, practising some form of marriage, to
spread over an unoccupied continent, they would soon split up into distinct
hordes, 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 (19. An ingenious writer argues, from a
comparison of the pictures of Raphael, Rubens, and modern French artists,
that the idea of beauty is not absolutely the same even throughout Europe:
see the 'Lives of Haydn and Mozart,' by Bombet (otherwise M. Beyle),
English translation, p. 278.); and then unconscious selection would come
into action through the more powerful and leading men preferring certain
women to others. Thus the differences between the tribes, at first very
slight, would gradually and inevitably be more or less increased.
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 are the selectors,
instead of having been the selected. We recognise such cases by the
females being 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, that of 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 own 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 has decked this sex, in order
to charm the females. As women have long been selected for beauty, it is
not surprising that some of their successive variations should have been
transmitted exclusively to the same sex; consequently that they should have
transmitted beauty in a somewhat higher degree to their female than to
their male offspring, and thus have become more beautiful, according to
general opinion, than men. Women, however, certainly transmit most of
their characters, including some beauty, to their offspring of both sexes;
so that the continued preference by the men of each race for the more
attractive women, according to their standard of taste, will have tended 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 more 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 our progenitors. Man in
all probability owes his beard, and perhaps some other characters, to
inheritance from an ancient progenitor who thus gained 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 her lover; and with the
Charruas of S. America, according to Azara, divorce is quite optional.
Amongst the Abipones, a man on choosing a wife 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. Captain Musters who lived with
the Patagonians, says that their marriages are always settled by
inclination; "if the parents make a match contrary to the daughter's will,
she refuses and is never compelled to comply." 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." 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." 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."
Amongst the wild tribes of the Malay Archipelago there is also a 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." A
similar custom, with the same result, prevails with the Koraks of North-
Eastern Asia.
Turning to Africa: the Kafirs buy their wives, and girls are severely
beaten by their fathers if they will not accept a chosen husband; but 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. So again, Mr.
Leslie, who was intimately acquainted with the Kafirs, says, "it is a
mistake to imagine that a girl is sold by her father in the same manner,
and with the same authority, with which he would dispose of a cow."
Amongst the degraded Bushmen 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." (20. Azara, 'Voyages,' etc., tom. ii. p. 23. Dobrizhoffer, 'An
Account of the Abipones,' vol. ii. 1822, p. 207. Capt. Musters, in 'Proc.
R. Geograph. Soc.' vol. xv. p. 47. Williams on the Fiji Islanders, as
quoted by Lubbock, 'Origin of Civilisation,' 1870, p. 79. On the Fuegians,
King and Fitzroy, 'Voyages of the "Adventure" and "Beagle,"' vol. ii. 1839,
p. 182. On the Kalmucks, quoted by M'Lennan, 'Primitive Marriage,' 1865,
p. 32. On the Malays, Lubbock, ibid. p. 76. The Rev. J. Shooter, 'On the
Kafirs of Natal,' 1857, pp. 52-60. Mr. D. Leslie, 'Kafir Character and
Customs,' 1871, p. 4. On the Bush-men, Burchell, 'Travels in S. Africa,'
ii. 1824, p. 59. On the Koraks by McKennan, as quoted by Mr. Wake, in
'Anthropologia,' Oct. 1873, p. 75.) 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." Additional cases could be given.
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 handsomest 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 favoured. 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 this double form of selection seems actually to have
occurred, especially during the earlier periods of our long history.
We will now examine a little more closely some of the characters which
distinguish the several races of man from one another and from the lower
animals, namely, the greater or less deficiency of hair on 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 whether they
have been acted on chiefly from 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 in a hot climate, for he is thus exposed to the scorching of
the sun, and 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; his body
therefore cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection.
(21. 'Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection,' 1870, p. 346.
Mr. Wallace believes (p. 350) "that some intelligent power has guided or
determined the development of man"; and he considers the hairless condition
of the skin as coming under this head. The Rev. T.R. Stebbing, in
commenting on this view ('Transactions of Devonshire Association for
Science,' 1870) remarks, that had Mr. Wallace "employed his usual ingenuity
on the question of man's hairless skin, he might have seen the possibility
of its selection through its superior beauty or the health attaching to
superior cleanliness.") Nor, as shewn in a former chapter, have we any
evidence that this can be due to the direct action of climate, 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 character 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 of 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, especially during the breeding-season. I
am informed by Mr. Bartlett that, as these animals gradually reach
maturity, the naked surfaces grow larger compared with the size of their
bodies. The hair, however, appears to have been removed, not for the sake
of nudity, but that the colour of the skin may be more fully displayed. So
again with many birds, it appears as if the head and neck had been divested
of feathers through sexual selection, to exhibit the brightly-coloured
skin.
As the body in woman is less hairy than in man, and as this character is
common to all races, we may conclude that it was our female semi-human
ancestors who were first divested of hair, and that this occurred at an
extremely remote period before the several races had diverged from a common
stock. Whilst our female ancestors were gradually acquiring this new
character of nudity, they must have transmitted it almost equally to their
offspring of both sexes whilst young; so that its transmission, as with the
ornaments of many mammals and birds, has not been limited either by sex or
age. There is nothing surprising in a partial loss of hair having been
esteemed as an ornament by our ape-like progenitors, for we have seen that
innumerable strange characters have been thus esteemed by animals of all
kinds, and have consequently been gained through sexual selection. Nor is
it surprising that a slightly injurious character should have been thus
acquired; for we know that this is the case with the plumes of certain
birds, and with the horns of certain stags.
The females of some of the anthropoid apes, as stated in a former chapter,
are somewhat less hairy on the under surface than 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. And the king of Siam had to bribe a man to marry the first
hairy woman in the family; and she transmitted this character to her young
offspring of both sexes. (22. The 'Variation of Animals and Plants under
Domestication,' vol. ii. 1868, p. 237.)
Some races are much more hairy than others, especially the males; but it
must not be assumed that the more hairy races, such as the European, have
retained their primordial condition more completely than the naked races,
such as the Kalmucks or Americans. It is more probable that the hairiness
of the former is due to partial reversion; for characters which have been
at some former period long inherited are always apt to return. We have
seen that idiots are often very hairy, and they are apt to revert in other
characters to a lower animal type. 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 (23. 'Investigations into Military and
Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers,' by B.A. Gould, 1869, p.
568: - Observations were carefully made on the hairiness of 2129 black and
coloured soldiers, whilst they were bathing; and by looking to the
published table, "it is manifest at a glance that there is but little, if
any, difference between the white and the black races in this respect." It
is, however, certain that negroes in their native and much hotter land of
Africa, have remarkably smooth bodies. It should be particularly observed,
that both pure blacks and mulattoes were included in the above enumeration;
and this is an unfortunate circumstance, as in accordance with a principle,
the truth of which I have elsewhere proved, crossed races of man would be
eminently liable to revert to the primordial hairy character of their early
ape-like progenitors.), and possibly with the Ainos, who inhabit the
northern islands of the Japan archipelago. But the laws of inheritance are
so complex that we can seldom understand their action. If the greater
hairiness of certain races be the result of reversion, unchecked by any
form of selection, its extreme variability, even within the limits of the
same race, ceases to be remarkable. (24. Hardly any view advanced in this
work has met with so much disfavour (see for instance, Sprengel, 'Die
Fortschritte des Darwinismus,' 1874, p. 80) as the above explanation of the
loss of hair in mankind through sexual selection; but none of the opposed
arguments seem to me of much weight, in comparison with the facts shewing
that the nudity of the skin is to a certain extent a secondary sexual
character in man and in some of the Quadrumana.)
With respect to the beard in man, if we turn to our best guide, the
Quadrumana, we find beards equally developed in both sexes of many species,
but in some, 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 through sexual selection as an ornament, transmitting them in most
cases, equally or nearly so, to their offspring of both sexes. We know
from Eschricht (25. 'Ueber die Richtung der Haare am Menschlichen Korper,'
in Muller's 'Archiv. fur Anat. und Phys.' 1837, s. 40.) 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 progenitors of whom 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 that her body became
almost completely divested of hair. Even the colour of our beards 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. In those Quadrumana in
which the male has a larger beard than that of the female, it is fully
developed only at maturity, just as with mankind; and it is possible that
only the later stages of development have been retained by man. In
opposition to this view of the retention of the beard from an early period
is the fact of its great variability in different races, and even within
the same race; for this indicates reversion, - long lost characters being
very apt to vary on re-appearance.
Nor must we overlook the part which sexual selection may have played in
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. It is also possible that the long-continued
habit of eradicating the hair may have produced an inherited effect. Dr.
Brown-Sequard has shewn that if certain animals are operated on in a
particular manner, their offspring are affected. Further evidence could be
given of the inheritance of the effects of mutilations; but a fact lately
ascertained by Mr. Salvin (26. On the tail-feathers of Motmots,
'Proceedings of the Zoological Society,' 1873, p. 429.) has a more direct
bearing on the present question; for he has shewn that the motmots, which
are known habitually to bite off the barbs of the two central tail-
feathers, have the barbs of these feathers naturally somewhat reduced.
(27. Mr. Sproat has suggested ('Scenes and Studies of Savage Life,' 1868,
p. 25) this same view. Some distinguished ethnologists, amongst others M.
Gosse of Geneva, believe that artificial modifications of the skull tend to
be inherited.) Nevertheless, with mankind the habit of eradicating the
beard and the hairs on the body would probably not have arisen until these
had already become by some means reduced.
It is difficult to form any judgment as to how the hair on the head became
developed to its present great length in many races. Eschricht (28.
'Ueber die Richtung,' ibid. s. 40.) 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 must therefore 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 perhaps 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 in man the colour of the skin has been
modified through sexual selection is scanty; for in most races the sexes do
not differ in this respect, and only slightly, as we have seen, in others.
We know, however, from the 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 have been
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 should have been gained through sexual
selection; but this view is supported by various analogies, and we know
that negroes admire their own colour. 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 is
transmitted to both sexes or to one alone. The resemblance to a negro in
miniature of Pithecia satanas with his jet black skin, white rolling
eyeballs, and hair parted on the top of the head, 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 some reason to
believe that the red, blue, orange, almost white and black tints of their
skin, even when common to both sexes, as well as the bright colours of