imagination and reason, no eminent success can be gained in many
subjects. These latter faculties, as well as the former, 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 gained will
have been transmitted more fully to the male than to the female
offspring. It accords in a striking manner with this view of the
modification and re-inforcement of many of our mental faculties by
sexual selection, that, firstly, they notoriously undergo a
considerable change at puberty (25. Maudsley, Mind and Body, p. 31.),
and, secondly, that eunuchs remain throughout life inferior in these
same qualities. Thus, man has ultimately become superior to woman. It
is, indeed, fortunate that the law of the equal transmission of
characters to both sexes prevails with 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 by
either sex late in life, to be transmitted to the same sex at the same
age, and of early acquired characters to be transmitted to both sexes,
are rules which, though general, do not always hold. If they always
held good, we might conclude (but I here exceed 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 in
mental power between the sexes would 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. All women, however, could not be thus
raised, unless during many generations those who excelled in the above
robust virtues were married, and produced offspring in larger numbers
than other women. As before remarked of bodily strength, although men
do not now fight for their wives, and this form of selection has passed
away, yet during manhood, they generally undergo 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. (26. An observation by Vogt
588