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
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