It is by no means realized that the incidence of moulding forces has changed and is changing with the environment of the race. So long as physical force, as between man and man, determined survival, as among savage races to-day, so long does it ensure to such races strong men and strong children, for in conflict with neighbouring tribes victory rests with the most powerful of physique and endurance and the most prolific. This last is an all-important concomitant if repeated conflicts are to be successfully waged. Among civilized peoples such contests began to lose their value in this regard when, by the introduction of arms, physical personality became a steadily diminishing factor. Victory now rests rather with those peoples who are most skilful in devising engines of destruction. The brain, not brawn, tells. But man cannot live by brains alone. With the inevitable decline in his physical nature man’s hold on existence is seriously imperilled. Civilization is making for extinction as much as over-specialization in the case of the lower animals. Hitherto, save in the case of decaying nations, women have played but a minor part in what we may call the “tribal” affairs of the race. Among the civilized nations of to-day, in proportion as the “maleness” of the community becomes more and more effete, the victims of sophistry, and the slaves of shibboleths, so the influence of the females asserts itself. And recent events among us show plainly enough that that influence is the reverse of good. Having its roots in personal vanity, and the love of notoriety, it is intolerant alike of reason and self-restraint, and that way madness lies. CHAPTER III MAN’S COUSINS THE APES The Man-like Apes and their mode of Life—Their “Courtships”—Musical Chimpanzees—How the Orang-utan improves his voice—His likeness to Caliban—The truculent visage of the Gorilla—“Ornament” in the lower Apes—The Concerts of the Howler Monkeys. We are none of us given to boasting of our poor relations, and most of us indignantly repudiate our kinship with the Apes. But facts are stubborn things: the relationship is there, whether we admit it or not: and those who love truth for truth’s sake will not shirk the comparison between themselves and their remote cousins. Unhappily, from our present point of view, this cannot be carried very far, for the “Love idylls” of the Apes have yet to be written. Such facts, however, as have been gleaned are interesting. Of the higher, man-like, or “Anthropoid” species only the most meagre information is to be obtained; but this nevertheless is interesting. For the most part we have to be satisfied with inferences drawn from a study of the external differences between the sexes—from the “Secondary Sexual Characters,” in short, and from the records of travellers who have encountered these creatures in their native wilds.