In the process of sexual selection in civilized lands, beauty has perhaps played a smaller rôle in determining the chosen males than it has in picking out the female parents. The physical and mental characteristics of the male which are vital for the future of the race have been more and more overshadowed by his ability to provide adequately or luxuriously for wife and immediate offspring. To an increasing extent also, the material resources possessed by men com eto be results of social accident, rather than of personal quality and efficiency of the types which are racially and socially desirable. If this last thesis is not true, then our whole system of free education, except the merely vocational training, is based on a gigantic fallacy.
Any man, however, lacking in personal qualifications may, if he has wealth, marry a woman of high parental fitness, mental as well as physical. He may not be able to obtain certain particular women of this high type, but he is sure of finding at least one who will accept him, if he desires such a one. This is true provided he has no glaring positive disqualifications; and even so, imperfections which are racially malignant, are lesser obstacles than superficial ones; a syphilitic history or puny physique are less influential than the loss of a leg or an eye.
