Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

THE BIOLOGY OF SEXculture) Herodotus mentions that those who were lesscharming might have to wait three or four years beforethey were chosen by a man. The same influence has nodoubt largely operated for marriage also in the past.Butnearly all women in lower stages of culture seem sooneror later to become pregnant (some observers have notedsothis of even the least attractive women among savages)that, while the delay in selection may diminish the opportunitiesof passing on the less preferred characters, anyracial selection must be limited.The possibilities of sexual "selection" in the Darwiniansense seem indeed to be capable of greater and more rapiddevelopment in the future. Even in our present phase ofcivilization a large number of women and men remainunmated, many of them because they have failed to evokethe pairing impulse in the opposite sex. If civilization inthe future tends to free mating from the influence of thoseextraneous considerations which today enable the unattractiveand the unfit to pair, and ideals of desirabilitybecome a more stringent motive in pairing, the process ofselection which leaves a large number altogether unpairedwould obviously be a strongly directive force in humanevolution. "If men wished women to be taller or less emotionalthan they are," remarks Heymans, "there are manytall women and unemotional women whom they couldselect to marry. But it will be long/' he adds, "beforesuch tendencies have free play."It is not possible therefore, at present, to regard Darwiniansexual "selection" as the chisel in the hands ofNature to mold the living being of the future into perpetuallynew forms while the refuse isbeing constantlyflung away. Within certain limits, as Heymans truly says,the feminine type must have a tendency to adaptitself tothe ideals of men, and the masculine type to the ideals of[39]