We may easily picture to ourselves, in detail, the application of this interesting conclusion to the human community. Here, also, the same causes have evidently influenced the development of the secondary sexual characters. The characteristics distinguishing the man, as well as those distinguishing the woman, owe their origin, certainly for the most part, to the sexual selection of the other sex. In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, especially in the romantic age of chivalry, it was the bodily struggles to the death—the tournaments and duels—which determined the choice of the bride; the strongest carried home the bride. In more recent times, however, in our so-called “polished” or “highly civilized” society, competing rivals prefer to contend indirectly by means of musical accomplishments, instrumental performances and song, by bodily charms, natural beauty, or artificial decoration. But by far the most important of these different forms of sexual selection in man is that form which is the most exalted, namely, _psychical selection_, in which the mental excellencies of the one sex influence and determine the choice of the other. The most highly intellectually developed types of men have, throughout generations, when choosing a partner in life, been guided by her excellencies of soul, and have thus transmitted these qualities to their posterity, and they have in this way, more than by any other thing, helped to create the deep chasm which at present separates civilized men from the rudest savages, and from our common animal ancestors. In fact, both the part played by the prevalence of a higher standard of sexual selection, and the part played by the due division of labour between the two sexes, is exceedingly important, and I believe that here we must seek for the most powerful causes which have determined the origin and the historical development of the races of man. (Gen. Morph. ii. 247.) As Darwin, in his exceedingly interesting work, published in 1871, on “The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection,”(48) has discussed this subject in the most masterly manner, and has illustrated it by most remarkable examples, I refer for further detail to that work.