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.
With animals in a state of nature, many characters proper to the males,
such as size, strength, special weapons, courage and pugnacity, have
been acquired through the law of battle. The semi-human progenitors of
man, like their allies the Quadrumana, will almost certainly have been
thus modified; and, as savages still fight for the possession of their
women, a similar process of selection has probably gone on in a greater
or less degree to the present day. Other characters proper to the males
of the lower animals, such as bright colours and various ornaments,
have been acquired by the more attractive males having been preferred
by the females. There are, however, exceptional cases in which the
males are the selectors, instead of having been the selected. We
recognise such cases by the females being more highly ornamented than
the males, their ornamental characters having been transmitted
exclusively or chiefly to their female offspring. One such case has
been described in the order to which man belongs, that of the Rhesus
monkey.
Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman, and in the savage
state he keeps her in a far more abject state of bondage than does the
male of any other animal; therefore it is not surprising that he should
have gained the power of selection. Women are everywhere conscious of
the value of their own beauty; and when they have the means, they take
more delight in decorating themselves with all sorts of ornaments than
do men. They borrow the plumes of male birds, with which nature has
decked this sex, in order to charm the females. As women have long been
selected for beauty, it is not surprising that some of their successive
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