The foregoing remarks do not imply that the purely anatomical and sensory factors are irrelevant to the selection of parents in any generation, and for methodological purposes it might be of value to abstract from the factors of sexual selection in human society such things as odour and contour. But it would be urgently necessary in the course of such a study, if it were to be other than extremely misleading, to observe that this selection of factors was made for purposes of convenience and that the relation of their importance to that of other factors was a matter for further and by no means casual consideration. We may certainly agree with Mr. Havelock Ellis that sexual selection occurs in human society, and may welcome his volume as supporting that assertion. There follows the extremely interesting and indeed urgent necessity of ascertaining what the factors of this selection really are, what is their relative potency, and what is their capacity for modification. We may further enquire whether they tend to be eugenic. A contribution to this subject is furnished by Mr. Ellis when he shows that width of “hips” is a female character commonly admired by men. Since a wide pelvis is one which can accommodate and safely give birth to a large fœtal head, there is here, as a practically solitary case, a bearing on the eugenic issue: large heads mean, in general, large brains, and it would be ill for the white races if men admired hips as narrow as those of, for instance, the negress, whose pelvis could not find room for the average head of a purely white baby, and who suffers terribly in many cases where the father is white, especially if the child be a boy. Meanwhile we must wait for studies of this great question from various points of view: notably for a study of the economics of sexual selection as it obtains in human society. Yet further, we require a detailed study of the influence of legislation, custom and public opinion upon sexual selection--on the lines of Mr. Galton's paper on “Restrictions in Marriage.” Mr. Havelock Ellis has more than adequately dealt with the nervous physiology of sexual selection; there remain the psychology and sociology of it--these latter comprehending, one may suppose, ninety-nine per cent. of the whole subject. In the preceding pages allusion has been made to one or two of the more salient aspects of this matter. CHAPTER XIII THE RACIAL POISONS: ALCOHOL[55]