How is it that every one whom I meet is so fine looking, not only your
men but your women? The Jollof answered, It is very easily explained:
it has always been our custom to pick out our worst-looking slaves and
to sell them. It need hardly be added that with all savages, female
slaves serve as concubines. That this negro should have attributed,
whether rightly or wrongly, the fine appearance of his tribe to the
long-continued elimination of the ugly women is not so surprising as it
may at first appear; for I have elsewhere shewn (4. Variation of
Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i. p. 207.) that negroes
fully appreciate the importance of selection in the breeding of their
domestic animals, and I could give from Mr. Reade additional evidence
on this head.
THE CAUSES WHICH PREVENT OR CHECK THE ACTION OF SEXUAL SELECTION WITH
SAVAGES.
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. These four points must be
considered in some detail.
It is obvious that as long as the pairing of man, or of any other
animal, is left to mere chance, with no choice exerted by either sex,
there can be no sexual selection; and no effect will be produced on the
offspring by certain individuals having had an advantage over others in
their courtship. Now it is asserted that there exist at the present day
tribes which practise what Sir J. Lubbock by courtesy calls communal
marriages; that is, all the men and women in the tribe are husbands and
wives to one another. The licentiousness of many savages is no doubt
astonishing, but it seems to me that more evidence is requisite, before
we fully admit that their intercourse is in any case promiscuous.
Nevertheless all those who have most closely studied the subject (5.
Sir J. Lubbock, The Origin of Civilisation, 1870, chap. iii.
especially pp. 60-67. Mr. M Lennan, in his extremely valuable work on
Primitive Marriage, 1865, p. 163, speaks of the union of the sexes
in the earliest times as loose, transitory, and in some degree
promiscuous. Mr. M Lennan and Sir J. Lubbock have collected much
evidence on the extreme licentiousness of savages at the present time.
Mr. L.H. Morgan, in his interesting memoir of the classificatory system
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