Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/312

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

social instincts, including in this term the family ties—the more important elements being love and sympathy.

Thus it appears that while sexual selection and intellectual development have gone hand-in-hand, it is no less true that the moral and emotional sides of, human nature have been developed by the operation of the same laws mainly through the female portion of the race. Though Darwin scarcely does more than touch upon this phase of the subject, he says: "Woman seems to differ from man in mental disposition, chiefly in her greater tenderness and less selfishness;" and again: "It is indeed fortunate that the law of equal transmission of characters to both sexes has commonly prevailed throughout the whole class of mammals; otherwise it is probable that man would have become as superior in mental endowments to woman as the peacock is in ornamental plumage to the peahen."

I shall refrain from indulging in any "would-have-beens" upon the moral aspects of this picture, in the contingency to which Darwin alludes, since we are concerned only with what is.

Our authority continues; "That there is a tendency to the equalizing of the sexes is undoubted in many of the secondary sexual characteristics; woman bestows these superior qualities on her offspring of both sexes."

Applying the principles, to the operation of which he imputes man's mental superiority, we will add—though in a greater degree upon her adult female offspring, since it is during her maturity that these qualities of greater tenderness and less selfishness are most called into exercise.

Although Darwin states that man has been more modified than woman by the law of heredity in connection with sexual selection, he admits its force in the development of both sexes by many statements which might be quoted, were it necessary. The principal argument against its equal force in the two cases is found in the fact that the young of both sexes in many animals, including the human, most resemble the mother. While this is true in a limited sense, the points of greater resemblance being mainly of a physical character, as superior softness and smoothness of skin, greater delicacy of muscles, muscular tissue, etc., it is not applicable to the qualities of tenderness and unselfishness, the cruelty and selfishness of children, especially boys, being proverbial.

Still quoting from the same work: "Although men do not now fight for the sake of obtaining wives, and this form of selection has passed away, yet they generally have to undergo, during manhood, 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.... 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