Extracts from Charles Darwin

Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex 1871

Part Three. Sexual selection in relation to man, and conclusion

Chapter 19.

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 women--The tendency to exaggerate each natural peculiarity.

Chapter 20.

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.

Chapter 21.

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.

On the causes which interfere with sexual selection in civilised and savage nations

The chief causes are, first, so-called communal marriages or promiscuous intercourse; secondly, the consequences of female infanticide; thirdly, early betrothals; and lastly, the low estimation in which women are held, as mere slaves.

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.