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 elsewhere. The same consequences with reference to
sexual selection would to a certain extent follow, when women are valued
almost solely as slaves or beasts of burden, as is the case with many
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 must 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 comes into
play at the same time 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 (16. Burchell says
('Travels in S. Africa,' vol. ii. 1824, p. 58), that among the wild nations
of Southern Africa, neither men nor women ever pass their lives in a state
of celibacy. Azara ('Voyages dans l'Amerique Merid.' tom. ii. 1809, p. 21)
makes precisely the same remark in regard to the wild Indians of South
America.), and generally marry whilst young. Consequently they must be
subjected to occasional hard struggles for existence, and the favoured
individuals will alone survive.
At a
very early period, before man attained to his present rank in
the
scale, many of his conditions would be different from what now obtains
amongst savages. Judging from the analogy of the lower animals, he would
then either live with a single female, or be a polygamist. The most
powerful and able males would succeed best in obtaining attractive females.
They would also succeed best in the general struggle for life, and in
defending their females, as well as their offspring, from enemies of all
kinds. At this early period the ancestors of man would not be sufficiently
advanced in intellect to look forward to distant contingencies; they would
not foresee that the rearing of all their children, especially their female
children, would make the struggle for life severer for the tribe. They
would be governed more by their instincts and 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 female infanticide. Women would not have been
thus rendered scarce, and polyandry would not have been practised; for
hardly any other cause, except the scarcity of women seems sufficient to
break down the natural and widely prevalent feeling of jealousy, and the
desire of each male to possess a female for himself. Polyandry would be a
natural stepping-stone to communal marriages or almost promiscuous
intercourse; though the best authorities believe that this latter habit
preceded polyandry. During primordial times there would be no early
betrothals, for this implies foresight. Nor would women be valued merely
as useful slaves or beasts of burthen. Both sexes, if the females as well
as the males were permitted to exert any choice, would choose their
partners not for mental charms, or property, or social position, but almost
solely from external appearance. All the adults would marry or pair, and
all the offspring, as far as that was possible, would be reared; so that
the struggle for existence would be periodically excessively severe. Thus
during these times all the conditions for sexual selection would have been
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 more powerful at a remote period
than at the present day, though probably not yet wholly lost.
THE MANNER OF ACTION OF SEXUAL SELECTION WITH MANKIND.
With primeval man under the favourable conditions just stated, and with
those savages who at the present time enter into any marriage tie, sexual
selection has probably acted in the following manner, subject to greater or
less interference from female infanticide, early betrothals, etc. The
strongest and most vigorous men--those who could best defend and hunt for
their families, who were provided with the best weapons and possessed the
most property, such as a large number of dogs or other animals,--would
succeed in rearing a greater average number of offspring than the weaker
and poorer members of the same tribes. There can, also, be no doubt that
such men would generally be 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. I hear from Mr. Mantell that, until
recently, 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 (17. 'Anthropological Review,' Jan. 1870, p. xvi.), "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
average. 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 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.