often singularly like children, and one can imagine many cases in which a savage might carry of his wife from several competitors by his mental ascendency alone, without having recourse to the carnal weapon. Lastly, Mr. Darwin himself afterwards points out at length that there are many cases even amongst savages in which the woman has a free choice, and in which she does not play the merely passive part of espousing the strongest of her suitors. Whenever this is the case, and we have no right to assume that it was not the case in a hypothetical semihuman race, the strongest would, of course, by no means always be the most successful in his matrimonial affairs.

We cannot, then, agree with Mr. Darwin in thinking that man owes his greater size and strength as compared with woman, "together with his broader shoulders, more developed muscles, rugged outline of body, and greater courage and pugnacity," to the continued success of the strongest man of some primaeval race in a long series of combats for the possession of their wives. On the contrary, if any selection" of this kind has ever taken place to an extent sufficient to produce any palpable and recognisable effect, we believe that it has been in favour of the most cunning, clever, inventive, and skilful men. We also cannot believe that man's superior strength, as compared with woman, has been kept up amongst the civilized races by the fact that "the men, as a general rule, have to work harder than the women for their mutual subsistence." Civilized man has as a rule to work harder than his wife, but his work in a very large proportion of cases is itself of a nature to diminish his physical strength, or it is attended with concomitant circumstances which do not favour his physical development. It is also worthy of notice here that the physical superiority of man as compared with women is even higher amongst civilized races than amongst savages, and this not only relatively but absolutely. Amongst savages, the women have generally to work at least as hard as the man, and thus the disproportion between the sexes is reduced. In a state of civilisation, on the other hand, whilst the women may have to work less and may thus be physically stunted of their full development, the man, contrary to what might have been expected-are on the whole physically superior to the savage races, in spite of the fact that their avocations are not such as always promote physical strength. That civilized man is a finer animal than savage man may be disputed, but

little doubt can be entertained as to the general truth of the above assertion. There is, therefore, a greater disproportion in strength between the sexes among civilized than among savage races; though, on Mr. Darwin's views, the cause which has led to this disproportion must have ceased to operate for many successive generations of the former.

Passing on now to the differences in the mental powers of the two sexes, Mr. Darwin adopts the view which most impartial and unbiassed reasoners affect, namely, that man is decidedly the superior of the women in intellectual calibre. In spite of all that has been said of late about the equality between the sexes, Mr. Darwin concludes that "the chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands." Accepting this intellectual difference, there are also other differences sufficiently weighty to support the view that the two sexes differ fundamentally in their mental constitution. If this be admitted, we might go farther than Mr. Darwin, and we might defend the proposition that the difference between the sexes, in the case of man, one essentially and primarily mental, and that the physical difference is a secondary and non-essential one, truly flowing from and depending on the former. Facts are by no means wanting which would support this view, but they are mostly unsuitable for introduction here.

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We next have a remarkable section on the voice and musical powers of man and some of the lower animals, the leading feature in which is the proposition that "although the sounds emitted by animals of all kinds serve many purposes, a strong case can be made out that the vocal organs were primarily used and perfected in relation to the propagation of the species." This is no new theory, and we have not time to analyse here the grounds upon which it rests. We may observe, however, that this theory leads to what we cannot but regard as a very debasing view of what music is and what it can effect. We are called upon, in fact, to believe that the feelings called up by music, of which Herbert Spencer remarks that it "arouses dormant sentiments of which we had not conceived the possibility and do not know the meaning," are merely reminiscences of the passions felt by some "half-human progenitor of man" during the season of

courtship, when his excitement led him to express himself in harmonious tones and cadences. On this view, "musical tones would be likely to excite in us, in a vague and indefinite manner, the strong emotions of a long past age.' So that, the emotions which we feel on listening to one of the productions of a great composer stand on no higher level than the impulse felt by dogs which leads them to turn round and round on the carpet as if to trample down grass to form their bed; both alike being vague associations inherited from some aboriginal ancestor! Water, however, rises no higher than its source; and it would be difficult to show how the complicated and wholly inexpressible emotions evoked by music, from their vague and indefinite nature, could ever have been developed out of the emotions felt by one of our savage ancestors in the performance of what, on Darwinian principles, must have been a purely animal function. Natural selection, certainly, never could have led to such a development, for it would need very strong evidence to establish the view that the appreciation of music is in any way beneficial either to the individual or the species; and there are no grounds for believing that sexual selection could have brought about such a fundamental change.

An elaborate account is next given of the habits of savages, in order to prove that men in all states of civilization, but especially in the lowest, are more or less influenced in their marriages by the beauty of the women. No one, we take it, will hesitate to admit this to the fullest extent; so that it is hardly necessary to devote any time to the demonstration of the fact that beauty, in all times and amongst all peoples, is a mere matter of taste; features which are admired by one man being regarded as hideous by another. Admitting that men are in many cases influenced in their choice of a wife by mere external appearances, we have to enquire whether "the consequent selection during many generations of those women which appear to the man of each race the most attractive, has altered the character either of the females alone or of both sexes." Mr. Darwin answers this enquiry in the affirmative, and though he adduces no very strong evidence in support of this view, we see no reason for doubting its general correctness. If, in fact, we admit that man is an animal at all, and no reasonable person would dispute this proposition, we must admit that he is amenable to the general laws which govern the improvement of the various breeds.

of domesticated animals. We cannot, therefore, doubt but that the tendency of each man to choose a good-looking wife, according to his standard of beauty, must in successive generations have had the effect of improving the personal appearance of the women, and, through them, of the race in general. This admission, however, in no way carries with it the acceptance of any belief that the fundamental characters which distinguish the sexes, or which separate man from the monkeys, have been produced by any conceivable action of "sexual selection" of this kind, acting through any conceivable period.

Mr. Darwin next passes on to notice the causes which he conceives to have interfered with or prevented the action of sexual selection amongst savages. The only cause adduced by him which demands our consideration, is what Sir John Lubbock has politely termed "communal marriages," i. e. the state of things in some savage tribes in which "all the men and women in the tribe are husbands and wives to each other." This state of things is, of course, a complete bar to the existence of "sexual selection," and we may at once dismiss it, so far as this aspect of the question is concerned. There is, however, another aspect of this subject upon which it may be well to make a few remarks. Upon strict Darwinian principles such a habit as that of "communal marriage" could never have been "the original and universal form throughout the world," unless it had been derived. by modification from habits and feelings existing in some prehuman type of animal. But this is one of the numerous points in which-paradoxical as it may seem-man really proves his superiority over the brutes, by being worse than any beast. The disciples of Mr. Darwin's school do not recognize that man's sius and vices, indeed his very capacity for doing wrong, raise him immeasurably above the brutes that perish. They can do no wrong, for they cannot transgress the laws of their nature; but man can act in opposition to the dictates of his higher nature, when he becomes, not worse than himself merely, but worse than any animal. The capacity to fall, however, is truly but a easure of the capacity to rise; and man's evils distinguish him n the lower animals as much as his virtues. From this point v, it is not difficult to shew that "communal marriage" is y human institution, that it can never have existed the quadrupeds, and that it cannot, therefore, have been amongst the early races of mankind by a modification

or expansion of habits existing amongst the animals. Not only is communal marriage an infinitely worse institution than anything known to obtain amongst the mammals; but it would not be difficult to show that its very existence depends upon the fact that man, alone of all the mammals, is not limited to a particular period of the year in which he courts the female. But Darwinism fails to assign any adequate cause to explain how man should in the first instance have come to depart from the ordinary rule amongst animals in this very important respect. On the other hand, communal marriage is utterly opposed to all the feelings which are known to regulate the relations between the sexes amongst the higher mammals. "With the existing Quadrumana, so far as their habits are known, the males of some species are monogamous, but live during only a part of the year with the females, as seems to be the case with the Orang. Several kinds, as some of the Indian and American monkeys, are strictly monogamous, and associate all the year round with their wives. Others are polygamous, as the Gorilla and several American species, and each family lives separate. Again,

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other species are polygamous, but several males, each with their own females, live associated in a body, as with several species of baboons." Upon the whole, therefore, Mr. Darwin concludes that "communal marriage" never prevailed amongst the mammals in a state of nature, or even amongst the primeval races of men, "if we look far enough back in the stream of time." It would appear, however, that such an admission strongly militates whole Darwinian hypothesis of the descent of man. descended from " some ape-like creature," as Mr. Darwin asks us to believe, it ought to be shown that the habits of man, at any rate in his savage condition, are modifications of habits in pre-human ancestors; and as such ancestors are unknown to us, traces of such habits, to say the least of it, ought to be shown to exist in the monkeys, since these are assumed to be man's nearest living relatives. But communal marriage, like so many of man's vices and degraded habits, is strictly human, and no traces of such an institution can be shown to exist in any of the mammals. Nay more, such an institution is wholly foreign to all the instincts of the brutes, so far as these are known to us. We may readily suppose that each male quadruped (except amongst the monogamous species) would prefer having as many wives as he could get; and hence we have no difficulty in