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. 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. 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,
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. 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. 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. 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. 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-
“The other day I got a curious
case of a unisexual, instead of hermaphrodite
cirripede, in which the female had the common cirripedial
character, and in two valves of her shell had two
little pockets, in each of which she kept a little
husband; I do not know of any other case in which
the female invariably has two husbands. I
have still one other fact, common to several species,
namely, that though they are hermaphrodite, they have
small additional, or shall I call them, complemental
males, one specimen, itself hermaphrodite, had
no less than seven of these complemental males
attached to it. Truly the schemes and wonders
of Nature are illimitable,"
Here, indeed, is a knock-down blow
to the theory of the natural superiority of the male.
These cases we have examined are certainly extreme,
the difference between the sexes is, as we shall see,
less marked in many early types. But the existence
of these helpless little husbands serves to show the
true origin of the male. How often he lived parasitically
on the female, his work to aid her in the reproductive
process, useful to secure greater variation than could
be had by the single-celled process. In other
words, the male is of use to the life-scheme in assisting
the female to produce progressively fitter forms.
She, indeed, created him, his sole function being her
impregnation.
Corroborative evidence appears in
the contrast which persists in all the higher forms
between the relatively large female-cell or germ and
the microscopical male-cell or sperm, as also in the
absorption of the male cellule by the female cellule.
In the sexual cells there is no character in which
differentiation goes so far as that of size. The
female cell is always much larger than the male; where
the former is swollen with the reserve food, the spermatozoa
may be less than a millionth of its volume. In
the human species an ovum is about 3000 times as large
as spermatozoa. The male cellule, differentiated
to enable it to reach the female, impregnates and
becomes fused within her cellule, which, unlike hers,
preserves its individuality and continues as the main
source of life.
It is true that exceptions occur,
sex-parasitism appearing in both sex forms, and in
some cases it is the female who degenerates and becomes
wholly passive and dependent, but this is usually under
conditions which afford in themselves an explanation.
Thus, in the troublesome thread-worm (Heterodera
schachtii), which infests the turnip plant, the
sexes are at first alike, then both become parasitic,
but the adult male recovers himself, is agile and
like other thread-worms, while the female remains
a parasitic victim without power of function-a
mere passive, distended bag of eggs. Another extreme
but well-known example is that of the cochineal insect,
where the female, laden with reserve products in the
form of the well-known pigment, spends much of its
life like a mere quiescent gall on the cactus plant;
the male, on the other hand, is active, though short-lived.
Among other insects-such, for example, as
certain ticks-a very complete form of female
parasitism prevails; and while the male remains a
complex, highly active, winged creature, the female,
fastening itself into the flesh of some living animal
and sucking its blood, has lost wings and all activity
and power of locomotion, having become a mere distended
bladder, which, when filled with eggs, bursts and
ends a parasitic existence that has hardly been life.
In many crustaceans, again, the females are parasitic,
but this also is explained by their habit of seeking
shelter for egg-laying purposes.
The whole question of sex-parasitism
as it appears in these first pages of the life-histories
of sexes is one of deep suggestion; and one, moreover,
that casts forward sharp side-lights on modern sex
problems. In some early forms, where the conditions
of life are similar for the two sexes, the male and
the female are often like one another. Thus it
is very difficult to distinguish a male starfish from
a female starfish, or a male sea-urchin from a female
sea-urchin. It becomes abundantly clear that
degeneration in active function, whether it be that
of the male or the female, is the inevitable nemesis
of parasitism. The males and females in the cases
we have examined may be said to be martyrs to their
respective sexes.
A further truth of the utmost importance
becomes manifest. Many differences between the
relative position of the sexes, which we are apt to
suppose are inherent in the female or male, are not
inherent, in light of these early and varying types.
We see that the sex-relationship and the character
of the female and male assume different forms, changing
as the conditions of life vary. Again and again
when we come to examine the position of women in different
periods of civilisation, we shall find that whenever
the conditions of life have tended to withdraw them
from the social activities of labour, restricting
them, like these early sex-victims, to the passive
exercise of their reproductive functions alone, that
such parasitism has resulted invariably in the degeneration
of woman, and through her passing on such deterioration
to her sons, there has followed, after a longer or
shorter period, the degeneration of society. But
these questions belong to the later part of our inquiry,
and cannot be entered on here. Yet it were well
to fix in our minds at once the dangers, without escape,
that follow sex-parasitism.
It may be thought that these cases
of sex-victims are exceptions, and that, therefore,
it is unsafe to draw conclusions from them. The
truth would rather seem to be that they are extreme
examples of conditions that were common at one stage
of life. There is no doubt that up to the level
of the amphibians female superiority in size, and
often in power of function, prevails. If, for example,
we look at insects generally, the males are smaller
than the females, especially in the imago state.
There are many species, belonging to different orders-as,
for instance, certain moths and butterflies-in
which this superiority is very marked. The males
are either not provided with any functional organs
for eating, or have these imperfectly developed.
It seems evident that their sole function is to fertilise
the female. A familiar and interesting example
is furnished by the common mosquitoes, among whom
the female alone, with its harmful sting, is known
to the unscientific world. The males, frail and
weaponless little creatures, swarm with the females
in the early summer, and then pass away, their work
being done.
Dr. Howard, writing of the mosquito in America, says-
“It is a well-known fact that
the adult male mosquito does not necessarily take
nourishment, and that the adult female does not necessarily
rely on the blood of warm-blooded animals. The
mouth parts of the male are so different from
those of the female that it is probable that,
if it feeds at all, it obtains its food in quite
a different manner from the female. They are often
observed sipping at drops of water, and in one
instance a fondness for molasses has been recorded."
We find many examples of such structural
modifications acquired for the purpose of adapting
the sexes to different modes of life. Darwin
notes that the females of certain flies are blood-suckers,
whilst the males, living on flowers, have mouths destitute
of mandibles. The females are carnivorous, the
males herbivorous. It would be easy to bring
forward many further examples among the invertebrates
in which the differences between the sexes indicates
very clearly the persistence of female superiority.
But for these I must refer the reader to the works
of Darwin and other entomologists, and to the many
interesting cases given by Professor Lester Ward.
There are, it is true, exceptions, but these may be
explained by the conditions under which the species
live.
Even when we ascend the scale to back-boned
animals, cases are not wanting in which the early
superiority in size of the female remains unaltered.
The smallest known vertebrate, Heterandria formosa,
has females very considerably larger than the males.
Among fishes the males are commonly smaller than the
females, who are also, as a rule, considerably more
numerous. This is a fact that fishermen are well
aware of. I may mention, as an example, that on
one occasion when my husband and I caught twenty-five
trout in a mountain lake in Wales there were only
two males among them. It is curious to find that
any care of offspring that is evident among fishes
is usually paternal. This furnishes another instance
of the truth so necessary to learn that the sex-relationships
may assume almost any form to suit the varying conditions
of life.
There are some mammals among whom
the sexes do not differ appreciably in size and strength,
and very little or not at all, in coloration and ornament.
Such is the case with nearly all the great family of
rodents. It is also the case with the Erinaceidae,
or at least with its typical sub-family of hedgehogs.
Even among birds, where the sex instincts have attained
to their highest and most aesthetic expression, we
find some large families-as, for example,
the hawks-in which the female is usually
the larger and finer bird. Thus the adult male
of the common sparrow-hawk is much smaller than the
female, the length of the male being 13 ins., wing
7.7 ins., and that of the female 15.4 ins., wing 9
ins. The male peregrine, known to hawkers as the
tiercel, is greatly inferior in size to his mate.
The merlin, the osprey, the falcon, the spotted eagle,
the golden eagle, the gos-hawk, the harrier, the buzzard,
the eagle-owl, and other species of owls are further
examples where the female bird is larger than the male.
Among many of these families the female birds very
closely resemble the males, and where differences
in colour and ornament do occur, they are slight.
A further point of the greatest importance
to us requires to be made. Wherever amongst the
birds the sexes are alike the habits of their lives
are also alike. The female as well as the male
obtains food, the nest is built together, and the
young are cared for by both parents. These beautiful
examples of sex equality among the birds cannot be
regarded as exceptions that have arisen by chance-a
reversal of the usual rule of the sexes; rather they
show the persistence of the earlier relations between
the female and the male carried to a finer development
under conditions of life favourable to the female.
I will not here say more upon this subject, as I shall
have to refer to it in greater detail when we come
to consider the sexual and familial habits of birds.
I will only add that in their delicacy and devotion
to each other and to their offspring, birds in their
unions have advanced to a much further stage than
we have in our marriages. These associations
of our ancestral lovers claim our attentive study.
II.-Two Examples-The Beehive and the Spider
“At its base the love
of animals does not differ from that of
man.”-DARWIN.
For vividness of argument I wish in
a brief section of this chapter to make a digression
from our main inquiry to bring forward two examples-extreme
cases of the imperious action of the sexual instincts-in
which we see the sexes driven to the performance of
their functions under peculiar conditions. Both
occur among the invertebrates. I have left the
consideration of them until now because of the instructive
light they throw upon what we are trying to prove
in this first attack on the validity of the common
estimate of the true position of the sexes in Nature.
Let us begin with the familiar case of the bees.
As every one knows, these truly wonderful insects
belong to a highly evolved and complex society, which
may be said to represent a very perfected and extreme
socialism. In this society the vast majority
of the population-the workers-are
sterile females, and of the drones, or males, only
a very few at the most are ever functional. Reproduction
is carried on by the queen-mother. The lesson
to be drawn from the beehive is that such an organisation
has evolved a quite extraordinary sacrifice of the
individual members, notably in the submergence of
the personal needs of sex-function, to its wider racial
end. It is from this line of thought that I wish
to consider it. We have (1) the drones, the fussing
males, useless except for their one duty of fertilisation,
and this function only a few actively perform; thus,
if they become at all numerous they are killed off
by the workers, so that the hives may be rid of them;
(2) the queen, an imprisoned mother, specialised for
maternity, her sole work the laying of the eggs, and
incapable of any other function; her brain and mind
of the humblest order, she being unable even to feed
and care for her offspring; (3) the great body of
unsexed workers, the busy sisters, whose duty is to
rear the young and carry out all the social activities
of the hive.
What a strange, perplexing life-history!
What a sacrifice of the sexes to each other and to
the life-force. It seems probable that these active
workers have even succeeded in getting rid of sexual
needs. Yet the maternal instinct persists in
them, and has survived the productive function; it
may, indeed, be said to be enlarged and ennobled,
for their affection is not confined to their own offspring,
but goes out to all the young of the association.
In this community one care takes precedence of all
others, the care and rearing of the young. This
is the workers’ constant occupation; this is
the great duty to which their lives are sacrificed.
With them maternal love has expanded into social affection.
The strength of this sentiment is abundantly proved.
The queen-bee, the feeble mother, has the greatest
possible care lavished upon her, and is publicly mourned
when she dies. If through any ill-chance she
happens to perish before the performance of her maternal
duties, and then cannot be replaced, the sterile workers
evince the most terrible grief, and in some cases
themselves die. It would almost seem that they
value motherhood more for being themselves deprived
of it.
Now, how does this history from the
bee-hive apply to us? Here you have before you,
old as the world itself, one of the most urgent problems
that has to be faced in our difficult modern society.
I have little doubt that something which is at least
analogous to the sterilisation of the female bees
is present among ourselves. The complexity of
our social conditions, resulting in the great disproportion
between the number of the sexes, has tended to set
aside a great number of women from the normal expression
of their sex functions. Among these women a class
appears to be arising who are turning away voluntarily
from love and motherhood. Many of them are undoubtedly
women of fine character. These “Intellectuals”
suggest that women shall keep themselves free from
the duties of maternity and devote their energies
thus conserved, to their own emancipation and for
work in the world which needs them so badly. But
the biological objection to any such proposition is
not far to seek. No one who thinks straight can
countenance a plan which thus leaves maternity to
the less intellectual woman-to a docile,
domestic type, the parallel of the stupid parasitic
queen-bee. Mind counts in the valuation of offspring
as well as physical qualities. The splitting of
one sex into two contrasted varieties, which we see
in its completed development in the bee-hive, cannot
be an ideal that can even be worth while for us.
It means an end to all further progress.
There is another group of women who
wish to bear children, but who seem to be anxious
to reduce the father to the position of the drone-bee.
He is to have no part in the child after its birth.
The duty of caring for it and bringing it up is to
be undertaken by the mother, aided, when necessary,
by the State. This is a terrible injustice against
the father and the child. It seems to me to be
the great and insuperable difficulty against any scheme
of State Endowment of Motherhood. I cannot enter
into this question now, and will only state my belief
that a child belongs by natural right to both its
parents. The primitive form of the matriarchal
family, which we shall study later, is realised in
its most exaggerated form by the bees and ants.
In human societies we find only imitations of this
system. And here, again, there is a lesson necessary
for us to remember. Any ideal that takes the
father from the child, and the child from its father,
giving it only to the mother, is a step backward and
not forward.
And in case any woman is inclined
still to admire the position of the female worker-bees,
so free in labour, being liberated from sexual activity,
it were well to consider the sacrifice at which such
freedom is gained. These workers have highly-developed
brains, but most of them die young. Nor must
we forget that each one carries her poisoned sting-no
new or strange weapon, but a transformation of a part
of her very organ of maternity-the ovipositor,
or egg-placer, with which the queen-mother lays each
egg in its appointed place.
Do “the Intellectuals”
understand what they really want? Those women
who are raising the cry increasingly for individual
liberty, without considering the results which may
follow from such a one-sided growth both to themselves
and to the race-let them pause to remember
the price paid by the sterile worker-bee. Is
it unfair to suggest that any such shirking for the
gains of personal freedom of their woman’s right
and need of love and child-bearing may lead in the
psychical sphere to a result similar to the transformation
of the sex-organ of the bee; and that, giving up the
power of life, they will be left the possessor of
the stinging weapon of death! Some such considerations
may help women to decide whether it is better to be
a mother or a sterile worker.
The second example I want to consider
is that of the common spider, whose curious courtship
customs are described by Darwin. Here we find
the relatively gigantic female seizing and devouring
the tiny male fertiliser, as he seeks to perform the
only duty for which he exists. This is a case
of female superiority carried to a savage conclusion.
The male in these courtships often has to risk his
life many times, and it seems only to be by an accident
that he ever escapes alive from the embraces of his
infuriated partner. I will give an example, taken
from the mantes, or praying insect, where, though
the difference in size between the sexes is much less
than among many spiders, the ferocity of the female
is extraordinary. This case is quoted by Professor
Lester Ward, who gives it on the authority of
Dr. L.O. Howard, one of the best-known entomologists-
“A few days since I brought a
male or Mantes carolina to a friend who
had been keeping a solitary female as a pet. Placing
them in the same jar, the male, in alarm, endeavoured
to escape. In a few minutes the female succeeded
in grasping him. She bit off his left front
tarsus and consumed the tibia and femur. Next
she gnawed out his left eye. At this the male
seemed to realise his proximity to one of the
opposite sex, and began vain endeavours to mate.
The female next ate up his right front leg, and
then entirely decapitated him, devouring his head and
gnawing into his thorax. Not until she had
eaten all his thorax, except about three millimetres
did she stop to rest. All this while the
male had continued in his vain attempt to obtain entrance
at the válvula, and he now succeeded, and she
voluntarily spread the parts open, and union took
place. She remained quiet for four hours,
and the remnant of the male gave occasional signs
of life, by a movement of one of his remaining tarsi
for three hours. The next morning she had entirely
rid herself of her spouse, and nothing but his
wings remained.”
You will think, perhaps, that this
extreme case of female ferocity has little bearing
upon our sexual passions. But consider. I
have not quoted it, as is done by Professor Ward,
to prove the existence of the superiority of the female
in Nature. No, rather I want to suggest a lesson
that may be wrested by us from these first courtships
in the life histories of the sexes. I spoke at
the beginning of this biological section of my book
of the warnings that surely would come as we traced
the evolution of our love-passions from those of our
pre-human ancestors. We are too apt to ignore
the tremendous force that the sex-impulse has gathered
from its incalculably long history. As animals
exhibit in their love-matings the analogies of the
human virtue, it is not surprising to find the occurrence
of parallel vices. Let us look for a moment at
this in the light of the fierce love-contest of the
female spider.
Of this habit there are various explanations;
the prevalent one regards the spider as an anomalous
exception; the ferocity and superiority of size in
the female not easily to be explained. This is,
I think, not so. Is it not rather a picture, with
the details crudely emphasised, of the action of Life-Force
of which the sexes are both the helpless victims?
Whether we look backward to the beginning, where the
exhausted male-cell seeks the female in incipient sexual
union, or onwards through the long stages of sex-evolution
to our own love-passions, this is surely true.
Let me try to make this clearer by
an example. It would seem but a small step from
the female spider, so ruthlessly eating up her lover,
to the type of woman celebrated by Mr. Bernard Shaw’s
immortal Ann. I recall a woman friend saying
to me once, “We may not like it, and, of course,
we refuse to own to it, but there is something of Ann
in every woman.” I need not recall to you
Ann’s pursuit of her victim, Tanner, nor his
futile efforts to escape. Here, as so often he
has done, Mr. Shaw has presented us in comedy with
a philosophy of life. You believe, perhaps, the
fiction, still brought forward by many who ought to
know better, that in love woman is passive and waits
for man to woo her. I think no woman in her heart
believes this. She knows, by instinct, that Nature
has unmistakably made her the predominant partner
in all that relates to the perpetuation of the race;
she knows this in spite of all fictions set up by
men. Have they done this, as Mr. Shaw suggests,
to protect themselves against a too humiliating aggressiveness
of the woman in following the driving of the Life-Force?
This pretence of male superiority in the sexual relation
is so shallow that it is strange how it can have imposed
on any one.
I wish to state here quite definitely
what I hold to be true; the condition of female superiority
with which sexuality began has in this connection
persisted. In every case the relation between
woman and man is the same-she is the pursuer,
he the pursued and disposed of. Nothing can or
should alter this. The male from the very beginning
has been of use from Nature’s point of view
by assisting the female to carry on life. It
is the fierce hunger of the male, increasing in strength
through the long course of time, which places him in
woman’s power. Man is the slave of woman,
often when least he thinks so, and still woman uses
her power, even like the spider, not infrequently,
for his undoing.
Here, indeed, is a warning causing
us to think. The touch of Nature that makes the
whole world kin is nowhere more manifest than in sex;
that absorption of the male by the female to which
life owes its continuation, its ecstasy, and its pain.
It has seemed to me it is here in the primitive relations
of the sexes that we may find the clue to many of
those wrongs which women have suffered at the hands
of men. Man, acting instinctively, has rebelled,
not so much, I think, against woman as against this
driving hunger within himself, which forces him helpless
into her power. Like the fish that cannot resist
the fly of the fisherman, even when experience has
taught him to fear the hidden barb, he struggles and
fights for his life to escape as he realises too late
the net into which his hunger has brought him.
But we may learn more than this; another
truth of even deeper importance to us. It is
because of this superiority of the female in the sexual
relationship that women must be granted their claim
for emancipation. Here is the reason stronger
than all others. Nature has placed in women’s
hands so tremendous a power that the dangers are too
great for such power to be left to the direction of
untrained and unemancipated women. Above all
it is necessary that each woman understands her own
sexual nature, and also that of her lover, that she
may realise in full knowledge the tremendous force
of sexual-hunger which drives him to her, equalled,
as I believe, by the desire within herself, which
claims him to fulfil through her Nature’s great
central purpose of continuing the race. To women
has been granted the guardianship of the Life-Force.
It is time that each woman asks herself how she is
fulfilling this trust.
It is the possession of this power
in the sexual sphere which lends real importance to
even the feeblest attempts of women to prepare themselves
to meet the duties in the new paths that are being
opened to them. Women have now entered into labour.
They are claiming freedom to develop themselves by
active participation in that struggle with life and
its conditions whereby men have gained their development.
From thousands of women to-day the cry is rising, “Give
us free opportunity, and the training that will fit
us for freedom.” Not, as so many have mistakenly
thought, that women may compete with men in a senseless
struggle for mastery, but in order first to learn,
and afterwards to perform, that work in society which
they can do better than men. What such work is
it must be women’s purpose to find out.
But before this is possible to be decided all fields
of activity must be open for them to enter. And
this women must claim, not for themselves chiefly;
but because they are the bearers of race-life, and
also to save men from any further misuse of their power.
Then working together as lovers and comrades, women
and men may come to understand and direct those deep-rooted
forces of sex, which have for so long driven them
helpless to the wastage of life and love.
I would ask all those who deny this
modern claim of women to consider in all seriousness
the two cases I have brought forward-that
of the bee-hives, and even more the destruction by
the female spider of her male lover. That they
have their parallel in our society to-day is a fact
that few will deny. I have tried to show the real
danger that lurks in every form of sex-parasitism.
It would lead us too far from our purpose to comment
in further detail on the suggestions offered by these
curious examples of sex-martyrs among our earliest
ancestral lovers. Those whose eyes are not blinded
will not fail to see.