SEXUAL SELECTION AS AN AGENCY TO ACCOUNT FOR THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE RACES OF MAN

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We have thus far been baffled in all our attempts to account for the differences between the races of man; but there remains one important agency, namely, sexual selection, which appears to have acted powerfully on man, as on many other animals. I do not intend to assert that sexual selection will account for all the differences between the races. An unexplained residuum is left, about which we can only say, in our ignorance, that as individuals are continually born with, for instance, heads a little rounder or narrower, and with noses a little longer or shorter, such slight differences might become fixed and uniform, if the unknown agencies which induced them were to act in a more constant manner, aided by long-continued intercrossing. Such variations come under the provisional class, alluded to in our second chapter, which for the want of a better term are often called spontaneous. Nor do I pretend that the effects of sexual selection can be indicated with scientific precision; but it can be shown that it would be an inexplicable fact if man had not been modified by this agency, which appears to have acted powerfully on innumerable animals. It can further be shown that the differences between the races of man, as in color, hairiness, form of features, etc., are of a kind which might have been expected to come under the influence of sexual selection.