Finally, the case of man must be considered from the point of view of
sexual selection, for Darwin claims that man has acquired a number of
his secondary sexual characters in this way. For instance, the beard is
an excellent case of a secondary sexual character. Darwin’s
interpretation is that the beard has been retained, or even developed,
through the selection by the females of those males that had this
outgrowth best developed. Conversely, the absence of hair on the face of
the female is supposed by Darwin to have been brought about by men
selecting those women having less hair on their faces. The greater
intellect, energy, courage, pugnacity, and size of man are the outcome
of the competition of the males with each other, since the individual
excelling in these qualities will be able to select the most desirable
wife, or wives, and it is assumed will, therefore, leave more
descendants. The standard of beauty has been kept up by men selecting
the most beautiful women in each generation (the fate of the other
married women is ignored), and this beauty is supposed to have been
transmitted primarily to their daughters, but also to their sons.
Although all these forms of selection are imagined to be acting in man,
either alternately or simultaneously, yet Darwin recognizes in man a
number of checks to the action of sexual selection: amongst savages, the
so-called communal marriages; second, infanticide, generally of the
young females, which appears in some races to be practised to an
astonishing degree; third, early betrothals; fourth, the holding of
women as slaves.
When we recall that selection to be effective can only be carried out
under very exacting conditions, we cannot but be appalled at the demands
made here on our credulity. The choice of the women has produced the
beard of man, the choice of man the absence of a beard in women; the
competition of the males with each other is leading at the same time to
the development of at least half a dozen qualities that are supposed to
be male specialities, and while all this is going on the results are
being checked sometimes by one means, sometimes by another. Moreover,
even this is not all that we are asked to accept, for there are several
other qualities of the male that are put down as secondary sexual
characters. For example, let us examine what Darwin has to say in regard
to the development of the voice, and of singing in man.
In man the vocal cords are about a third longer than in woman and his
voice deeper. Emasculation arrests the development of the vocal
apparatus, and the voice remains like that of a woman. This difference
between the sexes, Darwin thinks, is due probably to long-continued use
by the male “under the excitement of love, rage, and jealousy.” In other
words, an appeal is again made to the Lamarckian theory, and in this
case to explain the origin of an organ that conforms to all the
requirements of the secondary sexual characters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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