Read BIOLOGICAL SECTION : CHAPTER II of The Truth About Woman , free online book, by C. Gasquoine Hartley, on ReadCentral.com.

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.