The Descent of Man

any wish or expectation on the part of the men
who preferred certain women to others.
Let us suppose the members of a tribe, practising
some form of marriage, to spread over an
unoccupied continent, they would soon split up
into distinct hordes, separated from each other
by various barriers, and still more effectually
by the incessant wars between all barbarous
nations. The hordes would thus be exposed to
slightly different conditions and habits of life,
and would sooner or later come to differ in
some small degree. As soon as this occurred,
each isolated tribe would form for itself a slightly
different standard of beauty (19. An ingenious
writer argues, from a comparison of the
pictures of Raphael, Rubens, and modern
French artists, that the idea of beauty is not
absolutely the same even throughout Europe:
see the 'Lives of Haydn and Mozart,' by Bombet
(otherwise M. Beyle), English translation, p.
278.); and then unconscious selection would