But my view is, and I thought I had made it clear, that the female has
(in most cases) been simply prevented from acquiring the gay tints of
the male (even when there was a tendency for her to inherit it) because
it was hurtful; and, that when protection is not needed, gay colours are
so generally acquired by both sexes as to show that inheritance by both
sexes of colour variations is the most usual, when _not prevented from
acting_ by Natural Selection.
The colour itself may be acquired either by sexual selection or by other
unknown causes. There are, however, difficulties in the very wide
application you give to sexual selection which at present stagger me,
though no one was or is more ready than myself to admit the perfect
truth of the principle or the immense importance and great variety of
its applications. Your chapters on Man are of intense interest, but as
touching my special heresy not as yet altogether convincing, though of
course I fully agree with every word and every argument which goes to
prove the "evolution" or "development" of man out of a lower form.
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