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II.   INCREASING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MALE AND
  FEMALE SEX-CHARACTERISTICS AND FUNCTIONS
  ARE THE MAIN FEATURE OF HUMAN ADVANCE 21 III.   THE MYSTERY OF SEX AND SEX-TRANSMISSION 35 IV.   ONE SIDE OF BODY IS MALE, THE OTHER SIDE IS FEMALE 51 V.   MASCULINE MOTHERS PRODUCE EMASCULATE SONS
  BY MISAPPROPRIATING THE LIFE-POTENTIAL OF
  MALE OFFSPRING 73 BOOK II WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN DECADENCE I.   DECLINE AND FALL OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS
  DUE TO FEMINISM 95 II.   THE EVOLUTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE 109 III.   THE EXTINCTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE 126 IV.   THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES 146 V.   MALE AND FEMALE SEX-INSTINCTS AND MORALE
  DIAMETRICALLY DIFFERENT 166 VI.   FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DISASTROUS
  TO INFANT-LIFE AND HUMAN FACULTY 190 VII.   FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DESTRUCTIVE
  OF WOMANLY ATTRIBUTES, MORALE AND PROGRESS 219 VIII.   DANGEROUS SEPARATION OF WOMEN INTO TWO
  ORDERS: FEMINISTS AND FEMININISTS 242 IX.   THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN 264 APPENDIX FURTHER EVIDENCES IN SUPPORT OF BIOLOGICAL AND
  MENDELIAN PROPOSITIONS ADVANCED IN BOOK I 292

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BOOK I

WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN EVOLUTION

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CHAPTER I

IMPASSIONED FALLACIES OF FEMINISM

"The sexual love which has its origin in what is external and accidental may easily be turned to hate, a kind of madness that is nourished on discord; but that love, on the other hand, is lasting which has its source in freedom of soul and in the will to bear and bring up children."—Spinoza.

I

There is no subject save that of Religion about which so much impassioned fallacy has been spoken and written as has been spoken and written round the Woman Question.

For more than half a century—since Mill wrote his famous Subjection, indeed—it has become an increasing vogue to regard Woman as a martyr; more or less sainted, more or less crushed and effaced beneath the iron-heeled tyrannies, personal, economic, and political, of the oppressor, Man. And it has been in the spirit of this conviction and in fervid endeavours—indignant and chivalrous on the part of the one sex, and still more indignant and but little less chivalrous on the part of the other—to liberate unhappy victims from a barbarous oppression, that most of the impassioned fallacy has been spoken and written, and doughty deeds done.

At the certain cost, therefore, of being stigmatised as a reactionary (severely qualified), I propose to unmask some of these which I believe to be baseless obsessions, and to present a wholly new—and, I hope, a more veracious and inspiring version of the case between the sexes.

To begin with, I assert boldly that the so-called Subjection of Woman, very far from having been a cruel injustice merely, on the part of man, has served, on the contrary, as a blessing and an inestimable benefit not only to herself but to the Race bound up in her. A blessing often rough and painful in its methods, during epochs when all other methods were both rough and painful, attended, too, by wrongs and cruelties; yet, in the main, operating vastly to her well-being and advancement and, in hers, to those of the Race.

 

Looking back upon the hard and bloody routes of Evolution whereby the human Races have attained to present-day developments, we see our forbears groping blindly, fighting blindly, advancing blindly; stumbling, falling, picking up again; making new departures only hopelessly to lose the road; making new departures, now to find it and trudge on. In all its painful and laborious phases, a terrible and sordid climb. Yet, nevertheless, in its great annals of Ascent, a noble and a wondrous March of Progress.

And whether we are Religionists or Evolutionists—or are sufficiently broad-minded to be both—the history of Life is seen to have been a history of deathless effort, never ceasing, never waning; renewed with every generation; intensified by every further acquisition of new power, as, with every further recognition of new goals and problems, the ever-increasing Purpose and the ever-increasing perplexity and complexity of The Purpose revealed itself at every step. It becomes increasingly clear, moreover, that Creation, or Creative Evolution (to employ Professor Bergson's phrase), has been the resultant of a progressive aggregation of Atomic Matter about some