"We have not succeeded," he says, "in determining the radical and essential character of men and women uninfluenced by external modifying conditions. We have to recognise that our present knowledge cannot tell us what they might be, but what they actually are, under the conditions of civilisation.... The facts are so numerous that even when we have ascertained the precise significance of some one fact, we cannot be sure that it is not contradicted by other facts. And so many of the facts are modifiable under a changing environment that in the absence of experience we cannot pronounce definitely regarding the behaviour of either the male or female organism under different conditions."
Only a knowledge of the multifarious and complex environmental forces, which in the past have moulded women into what to-day they are, will lead us to our goal. We may examine woman's present character, both physical and mental, with every precision of detail, but the knowledge gained will not settle her inborn Nature. We shall discover what she is, not what she might be. No, rather to do this we must go back through many generations to primitive woman. We must study, in particular, that period known as the Mother-Age, when we find an early civilisation largely built up by woman's activity and developed by her skill. We must find out every fact that we can of woman's physical and mental life in this first period of social growth; we must examine the causes which led to the change from this Mother-rule to that of the Father-rule, or the patriarchate, which succeeded it. Insight into the civilisations of the past is of special value to us in trying to solve our problems of woman's true place in the social life. For one thing, we shall learn that morality and sexual customs and institutions are not fixed, but are peculiar to each age, and are good only in so far as they fulfil the needs of any special period of a people's growth. We must note, in particular, the contributions made by woman to early civilisation, and then seek the reasons why she has lost her former position of power. The savage woman is nearer to Nature than we ourselves are, and in learning of her life we shall come to an understanding of many of the problems of our lives.
This, then, must be the second path of our discovery, and, following it, we shall gain further knowledge of what is artificial and what is real in the character of woman and in the present relations of the sexes.
We find that the external surroundings that influence life are referable to one of two classes: those which tend to increase destructive processes, and find their active expression in expenditure of energy, and those which tend to increase constructive processes, and are passive instead of active, storing energy, not expending it. These two classes of external forces, disruptive and constructive, are called katabolic and anabolic. Looking back on the early natural lives of men and women, we find there has been a very sharp separation in the play of these opposite sets of influences. A hasty survey of the facts suffices to prove that the work of the world was divided into two great parts, the men had the share of killing life, whether that of man or of animals, their attention was given to fighting and hunting; while the women's share was the continuing and nourishing life, their attention being given to the domestic arts—to agriculture and the attendant stationary industries. Woman's position during the matriarchate was largely the result of the need in primitive society of woman's constructive energy, and her power arose from an unfettered use of her special functions. But this divergence of the paths of women from the paths of men continued, and during the patriarchal period became arbitrary with the withdrawal of women from initiative labour, an unnatural arrangement which arose out of later social conditions. The militant side of social activities has belonged to men, the passive to women; and men have been goaded into growth by the conditions and struggles of their lives. They have gathered around themselves a special man-formed environment of institutions and laws, of activities and inventions, of art and literature, of male sentiments, and male systems of opinions, to which they are connected in subtle and numerous relations, and this complex heritage of influences has been reimposed on men generation by generation. In this social working-life women have not had an equal part—and a drag in their development has arisen as the result of this passivity. At a certain period in civilisation women became an inferior class because men with their greater range of opportunities, which brought them within a wider and more variable circle of influences, developed a superior fitness on the motor side. Another contrast is very evident, men's work being performed under more striking circumstances and with more apparent effort and danger, drew to itself prestige, which women's work did not receive; their work, on the contrary, was held in contempt.[7]
Yet, in this connection, it is necessary to say emphatically that, in its origin, there was nothing arbitrary in this division between the sexes. It was, in itself, a natural outcome of natural causes, arising out of the needs of primitive societies. There is nothing derogatory to woman in accepting the passive or, more truly, the constructive power of her nature; rather it is her chief claim for the regaining of her true position in society. I wish at once to say how far it is from my desire to judge woman from a male standpoint. The power and nature that are woman's are not secondary to man's; they are equal, but different, being co-existent and complementary—in fact, just the completion of his.
There is another point that must be made clear.
The separation in the social activities of women and men was not brought about, as is stated so frequently, by men's injustice to women. There is an unfortunate tendency to regard the subjection of woman as wholly due to male selfishness and tyranny. Many leaders of woman's freedom hold to this view as their broad exposition of principle. Such belief is illogical and untrue. It cannot be too often repeated that sex-hatred means retrogression and not progress. I do not mean to say that women have not suffered at men's hands. They have, but not more than men have suffered at their hands. No woman who faces facts can deny this truth. Neither sex can afford to bring railing accusations against the other. The old doctrine of blame is insufficient. Women's disabilities are not, in their origin at least, due to any form of male tyranny. I believe, moreover, that any solution of the woman problem, and of woman's rights, is of ridiculous impotence that attempts to see in man woman's perpetual oppressor. The enemy, if enemy there is, of woman's emancipation, is woman herself.
But, on the other side, it is certain that the long-held opinion—what we may call "the male view of women"—which believes that the position woman occupies in society and the duties she performs are, in the main, what they should be, she being what she is, is equally false. Such theorists throw upon Nature the responsibility of the evils consequent on the deviations from equality of opportunity in the past lives of women. Truly we credit Nature with an absurd blunder do we accept this inferiority of the female half of life. Woman is what she is because she has lived as she has. And no estimate of her character, no effort to fix the limit of her activities, can carry weight that ignores the totally different relations towards society that have artificially grown up, dividing so sharply the life of woman from that of man.
I am brought back to the object of this book.
What are the conditions that have brought woman to her position of dependence upon man? How far is her state of physical and mental inferiority the result of this position? To what extent is she justified in her present revolt? What result will her freedom have on the sexual relationships? Will the change be likely to work for the benefit of the future? In a word, how far are the new claims woman is making consistent with race permanence? It is not one, but a whole group of questions that have to be answered when once the ideal of the right of the present position of the sexes is shaken. The subject is so entangled that a straightforward step-by-step inquiry will not always be possible. Dogmatic conclusions, and the bringing forward of too hasty remedies must alike be avoided. The past must lead us to the present, and thence we must look to the future. The first need is to find out every fact that we can that will help us in our search for the truth. Most writers on the subject, in their desire to fix on a cause of the evil, have selected one factor, or group of factors, and largely neglected all others. Otto Weininger, for instance, the brilliant modern denouncer of woman, refers the whole great difference between women and men to one cause—the bondage of sexuality. Mrs. Stetson, in Woman and Economics, finds a different answer to the same question, and assumes that the whole evil is of economic origin. Both explanations are in part true, but neither is the truth.
To institute reform successfully needs a wider spirit. We must face sex problems with biological and historical knowledge. Before we can understand women's present position in society, or even suggest a future, we must examine the place she has filled in the civilisations of the past; we must fix, too, the part the female half of life has played in the evolution of the sexes. Yet an inquiry into facts is only the first stage, and not the final. When we can go on from these facts to their results, and learn the reasons of what we have discovered, we shall become to some extent, at least, prepared. Then, and then only, can we venture to look forward and intelligently suggest whither the present revolution is leading us.
It is to reach this goal that this book is written. It is an attempt to place the woman question in a wider and more decisive light. It is not an investigation of facts alone, but of causes. The gospel it would preach is a gospel of liberation. And that from which woman must be freed is herself—the unsocial self that has been created by a restricted environment. We have seen that woman's social inferiority in the past has been to a great extent a legitimate thing. To all appearances history would have been impossible without it, just as it would have been impossible without an epoch of slavery and war. Physical strength has ruled in the past, and woman was the weaker. The truth is that woman's time had not come, but now her unconscious evolution must give place to a conscious development. Happiness for women! That must imply wholly independent activities, and complete freedom for the exercise of her work of race production. Woman's duty to society is paramount, she is the guardian of the Race-body and Race-soul. But woman must be responsible to herself; no longer must she follow men. The natural growth force needs to be liberated. Woman must be freed as woman; she must die to arise from death a full human being. There is no other solution to the woman question, and there can be no other.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Woman and Labour," The Chances of Death, Vol. I. p. 226.
[2] Quoted from The Emancipation of English Women, by W. Lyon Blease, a book which gives an unbiased, and in many respects excellent, account of the struggle of English women to gain freedom from the seventeenth century to the present day.
[3] Strictures, I. 6, Gregory.
[4] The Emancipation of English Women.
[5] For an account of this struggle see Sketch of the Foundation and Development of the London School of Medicine for Women, by Isabel Thorne; also The Emancipation of English Women.
[6] Woman and Economics, Mrs. Stetson, p. 38.
[7] See Thomas, Sex and Society, chapter on "Sex and Primitive Industry," pp. 123-146; and Ellis, Man and Woman, pp. 1-17.
PART I
BIOLOGICAL SECTION
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II
THE ORIGIN OF THE SEXES
Biology the starting-point of sociology—The irresistible force of Love—The true place of woman and man in the animal kingdom—Analogy between animal love-matings and our own—The Life-force—Reproduction a process of nutrition—Different modes of Reproduction—Cell-division—Successive stages of growth—Theory of sex—Its nature and origin—Incipient sex among the early forms of life—The true office of sex—The principle of fertilisation—Its use to the species in progressive development—Nutrition as a factor determining sex—Illustration of the volvox—The dependence of the male-cell upon the female-cell—The well-nourished female—The hungry male—Relation between food supply and the sexes—Illustrations—Lessons to be learnt—All species are invented and tolerated by Nature for parenthood and its service—The part played by the female—The demand laid upon her heavier than that laid upon the male—The female is mainly responsible for the race—The female led and the male followed in the evolution of life.
CHAPTER IIToC
THE ORIGIN OF THE SEXES
"Before studying the sexual relations, and their more or less regulated form in human societies, it will not be out of place to say a few words on reproduction in general, to sketch briefly its physiology in so far as this is fundamental, and, to show how tyrannical are the instincts whose formation has been determined by physiological causes."—Letourneau.
Let us now, as the first path of our inquiry, turn our attention to that biological point of view which is indispensable and fundamental if we are to understand those primary emotions, impulses and differences of the sexes, of deep organic origin, which were rooted long ago in the lowest forms of life, and hence were passed on to man from his pre-human ancestors. No apology is needed for this inquiry; for in these uncounted ancestral forces, dating back to the remote beginnings of life, we shall find hints, at least, of many things which lead up to and explain those problems which must be solved, before we can determine the true position of woman in the complex sexual relations of our social life. We cannot deny our lineage. The force which drove life onwards from the start drives it still to-day. The reproductive impulse is the chief motor of humanity; our seed is eternal. And the point of view that I wish to make clear is that the sex-impulses, which are, as few will deny, the base of the present unrest among women, have an inconceivably long history, and thus spring up within us with a tremendous organic momentum. To deny this force is futile, to suppress it impossible; all that can be done is to so regulate its expression that it may serve life instead of waste it. Implanted in every normal life is an instinctive desire to function in two ways: to grow and to reproduce, from the simple cell to the highest type of life, including man and woman, these two desires are essential and imperative. The irresistible Force of Life has been inherited by us from millions of ancestral lovers. Only when furnished with a re-interpretative clue to the origin of sex and its functioning can we come to realise its strength and its beauty, far stronger, far subtler, than we suspected before. It is the shirking of these life-facts that has resulted so often in error.
And let no one resent or think useless such an analogy between animal love-matings and our own. In tracing the evolution of our love-passions from the sexual relations of other mammals, and back to those of their ancestors, and to the humbler, though scarcely less beautiful, ancestors of these, we shall discover what must be considered as essential and should be lasting, and what is false in the conditions and character of the sexes to-day; and thereby we shall gain at once warning in what directions to pause, and new hope to send us forward. We shall learn that there are factors in our sex-impulses that require to be lived down as out-of-date and no longer beneficial to the social needs of life. But encouragement will come as, looking backwards, we learn how the mighty dynamic of sex-love has evolved in fineness, without losing its intensity, how it is tending to become more mutual, more beautiful, more lasting. And this gives us new hope to press forward on that path which woman even now is travelling, wherein she will be free from the risk of clinging to conditions of the past, which for so long have dragged her evolution in the mire.
The same force that pushed life into existence tends to increase and perpetuate it. For when the great Force of Life has once started, the same movements which constitute that life continue, and give rise to nutrition, the first of the great faculties, or powers, of life. Then, after this growth has been carried to a certain point, the organism from the superabundance of nutrition is furnished with a surplus growing energy, by means of which it reproduces itself, whence arises the second of the great life faculties. We thus have the two essential forces of life—the preservative force and the reproductive force, arising alike from nutrition. Food to assure life and growth for the individual; reproduction, an extension of the same process, to ensure the continuance of the species. We thus see the truth of Haeckel's definition that "reproduction is a nutrition and growth of the organism beyond its individual mass," or in biological formula, "a discontinuous growth."[8]
It is well to grasp at once this first conception of reproduction as simply an extension of nutrition, if we are to free our minds from misconception. It is a common belief that the original purpose of sex is to ensure reproduction, whereas fundamentally it is not necessary to propagation at all. It is perfectly true, of course, that in the majority of animals, and also in many plants, an individual life begins in the union of two minute elements, the mother egg-cell and the sperm father-cell. But this is not the earliest stage, and below these higher forms we find a great world of life reproducing without this sex-process by simple separation and growth. In these unicellular organisms reproduction is known as asexual, because there are no special germ-cells, nor is there anything corresponding to fertilisation. The most common forms are (1) by division into two; (2) by budding, a modified form of division; (3) by sporulation, a division into many units.[9]
It is worth while to wait to learn something of this first stage in the development of life, for in this way we shall gain a clue as to the origin of sex and the real purpose it fulfils in the service of reproduction. In the very simplest forms of unicellular organisms propagation is effected at what is known as "the limit of growth"; when the cell has attained as much volume as its surface can adequately supply with food, a simple division of the cell takes place into two halves or daughter cells, each exactly like the other, which then become independent and themselves repeat the same rupture process. But in some slightly more complex cases differences occur between the two cells into which the organism divides, as in the slipper animacule, where one-half goes off with the mouth, while the other has none. In a short time, however, the mouthless half forms a mouth, and each half grows into a replica of the original. We have here one of the earliest examples of differentiation. That injured multicellular organisms should be able by regrowth to repair their loss in an analogous phenomenon; thus an earth-worm cut by a spade does not necessarily suffer loss, but the head part grows a tail and the decapitated portion produces a head; sponges, which do not normally propagate by division, may be cut in pieces and bedded out successfully; the arms of a star-fish, torn asunder by a fisherman, will almost always result in several perfect star-fish. Similarly among plants a cut-off portion may readily give rise to new plants—a potato-tuber is one of hundreds of instances. This ability to effect complete repair is one of the powers that life has lost; it persists as high in the scale as reptiles, and a lizard is able to regrow an amputated leg.
It is certainly not the least interest in studying these early forms that one is able to trace the analogy they bear with the higher forms. No rigid line can be drawn between the successive stages of growth. And it should be borne in mind that, simple as is the life-process in these single-celled organisms, many of them are highly differentiated and show great complexity of structure within the narrow limits of their size. Thus among the protozoa, the basis of all animal life, we find very definite and interesting modes of behaviour, such as seeking light and avoiding it, swimming in a spiral, approaching certain substances and retreating from others; the organisms often, indeed, trying one behaviour after another.[10] If we realise this it becomes easier to understand how the higher types of life have developed from these primitive types. Indeed, all the bodies of the most complex animals—including ourselves—originate as simple cells, and in the individual history of each of us divide and multiply just as do the cells which exist independently; only in multicellular organisms each cell must be regarded as an individual, modified to serve a special purpose, one cell differentiated to start a lineage of nerve cells, another a lineage of digestive cells, yet another for the reproduction of the species, and so on, each group of cells taking on its special use, but the power of division remaining with the modified cell. Thus a new life is built up—a child becomes an adult, by multiplication of these differentiated cells, repeating the original single-cell development.
Budding, the second, and perhaps the most usual mode of asexual propagation, may be said to mark a further step in the development of the reproductive process. Here the mother-cell, instead of dividing into two equal parts and at once rupturing, protrudes a small portion of its substance, which is separated by a constriction that grows deeper and deeper until the bulk becomes wholly detached. This small bud then grows until it attains the size of the parent, when it, in turn, repeats the same process. This mode of reproduction is common to the great majority of plants. In animal life it is not confined to single-celled organism, but takes place in certain multicellulars, such as worms, bryozoans, and ascidians; one very interesting example being the sea-worm (myrianida) which buds off a whole chain of individuals.
Nearly allied with budding is the third stage, in which the division is multiple and rapid within the limited space of the mother-cell. This is known as spore formation. The cells become detached, and do not further develop until they have escaped from the parent. They then increase by division and growth to form independent individuals. This spore reproduction is found among certain types of vegetation; it also occurs in the protozoa.
It is probable that these three stages of asexual reproduction are not all the steps actually taken by Nature in the development of the early life-process. There must have been intermediate steps, perhaps many such, but the forms in which they occur either have not persisted, or have not yet been studied.[11] The feature common to all ordinary forms of asexual multiplication is that the reproductive process is independent of sex; what starts the new life is the half, or a liberated portion of the single parent cell. It will be readily seen that by this process the offspring are identical with the parent. Life continues, but it continues unchanged. Thus the power of growth is restricted within extremely narrow limits. Any further development required a new process. With the life-force pushing in all directions every possible process would be tried. We are often met with striking phenomena of adjustments to new conditions, which in some cases, when found to be advantageous to the organism, persist. There is, in fact, abundant evidence that Nature in these early days of life was making experiments. In pursuance of this policy it naturally came about that any process by which the organism gained increased power of growth had the greater likelihood of survival. The number of devices in the way of modification of form and habit to secure advantage is practically infinite; but there was one principle that was eagerly seized upon at a very early stage, and, persisting by this law of advantage, was utilised by all progressive types as an accessory of success. This was the principle of fertilisation, which arose in this way from what would almost seem the chance union of two cells, at first alike, but afterwards more and more highly differentiated, and from whose primordial mating have proceeded by a natural series of ascending steps all the developed forms of sex.
The ways in which this was brought about we have now to see. But even at this point it becomes evident that the true office of sex was not the first need of securing reproduction—that had been done already—rather it was the improving and perfecting of the single-cell process by introducing variation through the commingling of the ancestral hereditary elements of two parents, and, by means of such variations, the production of new and higher forms of life—in fact, progress by the mighty dynamic of sex.[12]
As we should expect, the passing from the sexless mode of reproduction to the definite male and female types is not sharply defined or abrupt. Even among many unicellular organisms the process becomes more elaborate with distinct specialisation of reproductive elements. In some cases conjugation is observed, when two individuals coalesce, and each cell and each nucleus divides into two, and each half unites with the half of the other to form a new cell. This is asexual, since the uniting cells are exactly similar, but the effect would seem to be the strengthening of the cells by, as it were, introducing new blood. In somewhat more complex cases these cells do not part company when they divide, but remain attached to one another, and form a kind of commonwealth. Here one can see at once that some cells in a little group will be less advantageously placed for the absorption of nourishment than others. By degrees this differentiation of function brings about differentiation of form, and cells become modified, in some cases, to a surprising extent, to serve special purposes. The next advance is when the uniting cells become somewhat different in themselves. In the early stages this difference appears as one of size; a small weakly cell, though sometimes propagating by union with a similar cell, in other cases seeks out a larger and more developed cell, and by uniting with it in mutual nourishment becomes strong. This may be seen among the protozoa where we can trace the distinct beginnings of the male and female elements. A very instructive example is furnished by the case of volvox, a multicellular vegative organism of very curious habits. The cells at first are all alike; they are united by protoplasmic bridges and form a colony. In favourable environmental conditions of abundant nutrition this state of affairs continues, and the colony increases only by multiplication and without fertilisation. But when the supply of food is exhausted, or by any cause is checked, sexual reproduction is resorted to, and this in a way that illustrates most instructively the differentiation of the female and male cells. Some of the cells are seen accumulating nourishment at the expense of the others and grow larger, and if this continues, cells which must be regarded as ova, or female cells, result; while other cells, less advantageously placed with more competitors struggling to obtain food, grow smaller and gradually change their character, becoming, in fact, males. In some cases distinct colonies may in this way arise, some composed entirely of the large well-nourished cells, and others of small hungry cells, and may be recognised as completely female or male colonies.[13]
We are now in a position to gain a clue to the difficult problem of the origin of the sexes. It would be easy as well as instructive to accumulate examples.[14] I am tempted to linger over the life-histories of these early organisms that are so full of suggestion; but the case I have selected—the volvox—really answers the question. Sex here is dependent on, and would seem to have arisen through, differences in environmental conditions. We find the well-nourished, larger, and usually more quiescent cell is the female, the hungrier and more mobile cell the male; the one concerned with storing energy, the other with consuming it, the one building up, the other breaking down; or expressed in biological formula, the female cell is predominantly anabolic, that of the male predominantly katabolic. Thus we find that the male, through a want of nutrition, was carried developmentally away from the well-fed female cell, which it was bound to seek and unite with to continue life. This relation between the food supply and the sexes is found persisting in higher forms, and, in this connection, the well-known experiments of Young on tadpoles and of Siebald on wasps may be cited. By increasing the nutrition of tadpoles the percentage of females was raised from the normal of about fifty per cent. to ninety, while similarly among wasps the number of females was found to depend on warmth and food supply, and to decrease as these diminished. Mention also may be made of the plant-lice, or aphides, which infest our rose-bushes and other plants, which, during the summer months, when conditions are favourable, produce generation after generation of females, but on the advent of autumn, with its cold and scarcity of food, males appear and sexual reproduction takes place. Similarly brine-shrimps when living under favourable conditions produce females, but when the environment is less favourable males as well are found. Another significant fact is the simple and well-known one that within the first eight days of larval life the additions of food will determine the striking and functional differences between the workers and queen-bee.[15] Among the higher animals the difficulties of proving the influence of environment upon sex are, of course, much greater. There are, however, many facts which point to a persistence of this fundamental differentiation. Among these it is sufficient to mention the experiments of stock-breeders, which show that good conditions tend to produce females; and the testimony of furriers that rich regions yield more furs from females, and poor regions more from males. Even when we reach the human species facts are not wanting to suggest a similar condition. It is usual in times of war and famine for more boys to be born; also more boys are born in the country than in cities, possibly because the city diet is richer, especially in meat. Similarly among poor families the percentage of boys is higher than in well-to-do families. And although such evidence is not conclusive and must be accepted with great caution, it seems safe to say that the facts—of which I have given a few only of the most common—are sufficient to suggest that the relation among the lower forms of life persists up to the human species, and that the female is the result of surplus nutrition and the male of scarcity.
This is sufficient for our present purpose; all other questions and theories brought forward regarding the determination and conditions of the sexes are outside our purpose. Those who will survey the evidence in detail will find ample confirmation of the point of view I wish to make clear. (1) All species are invented and tolerated by Nature for parenthood and its service; (2) the demands laid upon the female by the part required from her are heavier than those needed for the part fulfilled by the male. The female it is who is mainly responsible to the race. And for this reason the progress of the world of life has always rested upon and been determined by the female half of life. What I wish to establish now is that the male developed after and, as it were, from the female. The female led, and the male followed her in the evolution of life.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Haeckel, Generelle Morphologie der Organismen, Vol. II. p. 16.
[9] Thomson, J. Arthur, Heredity, p. 29.
[10] Thomson, J. Arthur, Heredity, p. 33.
[11] Ward, Pure Sociology, p. 307.
[12] See Ward, op. cit., pp. 304-314, from whose chapter on this subject I have taken these facts.
[13] Evolution of Sex, pp. 137-138, 161.
[14] Geddes and Thomson, in The Evolution of Sex, pp. 117-123, 135-140, give many interesting and corroborative examples.
[15] Geddes and Thomson, The Evolution of Sex, pp. 40-52, 249-250; give a complete exposition of this theory with many examples. See also Thomas, Sex and Society, pp. 4-43.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER III
GROWTH AND REPRODUCTION
I.—The Early Position of the Sexes
A further examination into the opinion of the superiority of the male—Contradictions to the accepted view of female inferiority—A new way of stating the problem—The female as the creator of the male—Examples of the simplest types of the sexes—Predominance of the female in the animal kingdom below the invertebrates—Superiority of the female in size and often in power of function—Complemental male husbands—Illustrations of male parasites—Corroborative evidence from the sex-elements—The primary service of the male to assist the female in the race-work—Sex-parasitism among females—This explained by the conditions under which the species live—The lessons to be drawn from sex-parasitism—Structural modifications acquired for adapting the sexes to different modes of life—Care of offspring not always confined to the female—Among fishes it is the father who gives any attention to the young—The superiority of the female persists among higher forms—Examples—Sex-equality among birds—Conclusion—The sexual relationship may assume almost any form to suit the varying conditions of life.
II.—Two Examples—The Beehive and the Spider
The case of the beehive—The drones—The queen-mother—The sterile-workers—The sacrifice of the sexes to the Life-Force—The maternal instinct among the workers—This has persisted after the atrophy of the sexual needs—Maternal love has expanded out into social affection—Application of the lessons of the beehive—Analogy with modern society—The Intellectuals among women—Do they understand what they really want—The organic necessity of love—The price of sterility—The courtship of the Spider—Mr. Bernard Shaw's Ann—The part played by woman in courtship—Her passivity only apparent—Female superiority with which sexuality began remains in every courtship—The fierce hunger of the male—His absorption by the female—Nothing can, or should, alter this—The importance of woman's activity in love in connection with her claim for emancipation—General observations and conclusion.
CHAPTER IIIToC
GROWTH AND REPRODUCTION
"Sexually Woman is Nature's contrivance for perpetuating its highest achievement. Sexually Man is Woman's contrivance for fulfilling Nature's behest in the most economical way. She knows by instinct that far back in the evolution process she invented him, differentiated him, created him in order to produce something better than the single-cell process can produce."—Don Juan in Hell—Man and Superman.
I.—The Early Position of the Sexes
The opinion of the superiority of the male sex has been so widely, and without question, accepted that it is necessary to emphasise the exact opposite view which was brought forward in the last chapter. From the earliest times it has been contended that woman is undeveloped man.[16] This opinion is at the root of the common estimation of woman's character to-day. Huxley, who was in favour of the emancipation of women, seems to have held this opinion. He says that "in every excellent character the average woman is inferior to the average man in the sense of having that character less in quantity or lower in quality;" and that "the female type of character is neither better nor worse than the male, only weaker." Few have maintained that the sexes are equal, still fewer that women excel.[17] The general bias of opinion has always been in favour of men. Woman almost invariably has been accorded a secondary place, the male has been held to be the primary and essential half of life, all things, as it were, centering around him, while the female, though necessary to the continuance of the race, has been regarded as otherwise unimportant—in fact, a mere accessory to the male.
The causes that have given rise to such an opinion are not far to seek. The question has been approached from the wrong end; we have looked from above downwards—from the latest stages of life back to the beginning, instead of from the beginning on to the end. We find among the higher forms of life—the animals with which we are all familiar—that the males are as a rule larger and stronger, more varied in structure, and more highly ornamented and adorned than the females. And when we rise to the human species these sex differences persist and are even emphasised, though finding their expression in a greater number of less strongly marked characters, not on the physical side alone, but on the mental and psychical. It is difficult to divest the mind of facts with which it is most familiar. Thus it is easy to understand the widely-held opinion of the superiority of the male half of life, and that the female is the sex sacrificed to the reproductive process.
Now, were this true, the question of woman's place in life would indeed be settled. There can be no upward change which is not in accord with the laws of Nature. If the female really started and had always remained secondary to the male, necessary to continue life, but otherwise unimportant, in such position she must be content to stay. Her struggles for advancement may be heroic, yet would they be doomed to failure, for no individual growth can persist which injures the growth of the race-life. Well it is for women that there need be no such fear, even among the most timid-hearted; woman's position and advancement is sure because it is founded with deepest roots in the organic scheme of life.
As once more we search backwards, tracing the differences of sex function to their earliest appearance in the humblest types of life, we find the exact opposite of this theory of the inferiority of the female to be true. The female is of more importance than the male from Nature's point of view. We have seen that life must be regarded as essentially female, since there is no choice but to look upon asexual reproduction as a female process; the single-cell being the mother-cell with the fertilising element of the father or male-cell wanting. We know further that a similar process, but much more highly developed, is possible in what is called parthenogenesis, or virgin-birth, which can only be explained as a survival of the early form. For long life continued without the assistance of the male-cell, which, when it did arise, was dependent on the ova, or female-cell, and was driven by hunger to unite with it in fatigue to continue life. We are thus forced to regard the male-cell as an auxiliary development of the female, or as Lester Ward ingenuously puts it, "an after-thought of Nature devised for the advantage of having a second sex."
Now, if we examine the simplest types of the sexes in the lower reaches of the animal kingdom,[18] below the vertebrates we find the same conditions prevailing. The male is frequently inconspicuous in size, of use only to fertilise the female, and in some cases incapable of any other function; the female, on the other hand, remains unchanged and carries on the life of the species. So marked is this difference among some species that the male must be regarded as a fallen representative of the female, having not only greatly diminished in size, but undergone thorough degeneration in structure.[19] In certain extreme cases what have been well called "pigmy males" illustrate this contrast in an almost ridiculous degree. This is well seen among the common rotifers, where the males are much smaller than the females and very degenerate. Sometimes they seem to have dwindled out of existence altogether, as only females are to be seen; in other cases, though present they fail even to accomplish their proper function of fertilisation, and as reproduction is carried on by the females, they are not only minute but useless. Nor are such cases of male degeneration confined to this group. The whole family of the Abdominalia (cirripedes) have the sexes separate; and the males, comparatively very small, are attached to the body of each female, and are entirely passive and dependent upon her.[20] Some of these male parasites are so far degenerated as to have lost their digestive organs and are incapable of any function except fertilisation: the male Sygami (menatodes), for instance, being so far effaced that it is nothing but a testicle living on the female.[21] A yet more striking instance is furnished by the curious green worm Bonellia, where the male appears like a remote ancestor of the female, on whom it lives parasitically. Somewhat similar is the cocus insect, among whom the males are very degenerate, small, blind and wingless.
This phenomenon of minute parasitic male fertilisers in connection with normally developed females was noticed by Darwin, and his observations have been confirmed by Van Beneden, by Huxley, Haeckel, Milne Edwards, Fabre, Patrick Geddes, and many other eminent entomologists.[22] A full study of these early forms of sexuality should be made by all who wish to understand the problem of woman; their life-histories furnish prophecies of many large facts. I wish it were possible for me to bring forward further examples. It is the difficulty of treating so wide a subject within narrow limits that so many things that are of interest have to be hurried over and left out. But there is one delightful case that I cannot refrain from mentioning. The facts are given in a letter from Darwin to Sir Charles Lyell, dated September 14, 1849. It is quoted by Professor Lester Ward. This instance of the sexual relationship among the cirripedes illustrates very vividly the early superiority of the female.
The letter runs thus—