etc., in different races: no doubt it must act to some extent, but will
it be ever so rigid as to induce a definite physical modification, and
can we imagine it to have had any part in producing the distinct races
that now exist?
The sexual selection you allude to will also, I think, have been equally
uncertain in its results. In the very lowest tribes there is rarely much
polygamy, and women are more or less a matter of purchase. There is also
little difference of social condition, and I think it rarely happens
that any healthy and undeformed man remains without wife and children. I
very much doubt the often-repeated assertion that our aristocracy are
more beautiful than the middle classes. I allow that they present
_specimens_ of the highest kind of beauty, but I doubt the average. I
have noticed in country places a greater average amount of good looks
among the middle classes, and besides, we unavoidably combine in our
idea of beauty, intellectual expression and refinement of _manner_,
which often make the less appear the more beautiful. Mere physical
beauty--that is, a healthy and regular development of the body and
features approaching to the _mean_ or _type_ of European man--I believe
is quite as frequent in one class of society as the other, and much more
frequent in rural districts than in cities.
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