Incidental Thoughts on a Bald Head - Page 2

not have kept his hair on. According to the theory of natural
selection, materially favourable variations survive, unfavourable
disappear; the only way in which the loss is to be accounted for is by
explaining it as advantageous; but where is the advantage of losing your
hair? The disadvantages appear to me to be innumerable. A thick covering
of hair, like that of a Capuchin monkey, would be an invaluable
protection against sudden changes of temperature, far better than any
clothing can be. Had I that, for instance, I should be rid of the
perpetual cold in the head that so disfigures my life; and the
multitudes who die annually of chills, bronchitis, and consumption, and
most of those who suffer from rheumatic pains, neuralgia, and so forth,
would not so die and suffer. And in the past, when clothing was less
perfect and firing a casual commodity, the disadvantages of losing hair
were all the greater. In very hot countries hair is perhaps even more
important in saving the possessor from the excessive glare of the sun.
Before the invention of the hat, thick hair on the head at least was
absolutely essential to save the owner of the skull from sunstroke.
That, perhaps, explains why the hair has been retained there, and why it
is going now that we have hats, but it certainly does not explain why it
has gone from the rest of the body.

One--remarkably weak--explanation has been propounded: an appeal to our
belief in human vanity. He picked it out by the roots, because he
thought he was prettier without. But that is no reason at all. Suppose
he did, it would not affect his children. Professor Weismann has at
least convinced scientific people of this: that the characters acquired
by a parent are rarely, if ever, transmitted to its offspring. An
individual given to such wanton denudation would simply be at a
disadvantage with his decently covered fellows, would fall behind in the
race of life, and perish with his kind. Besides, if man has been at such
pains to uncover his skin, why have quite a large number of the most
respected among us such a passionate desire to have it covered up again?

Yet that is the only attempted explanation I have ever come upon, and
the thing has often worried me. I think it is just as probably a change
in dietary. I have noticed that most of your vegetarians are
shock-headed, ample-bearded men, and I have heard the Ancestor was
vegetarian. Or it may be, I sometimes fancy, a kind of inherent
disposition on the part of your human animal to dwindle. That came back
in my memory vividly as I looked at the long rows of Sceptics, typical
Advanced people, and marked their glistening crania. I recalled other
losses. Here is Humanity, thought I, growing hairless, growing bald,
growing