We have observed that through the great sexual ardour developed at puberty within the male of the lower species, numberless variations of structure have been acquired, characters which, as they are the result of undeveloped atoms cast off from the varying parts in his progenitors, denote low organization. We have seen also that these characters require for their growth an immense amount of vital force, which, had the development of the male been normal, would have been expended in perfecting the organism, or would have been utilized in fitting it to overcome the adverse conditions of his environment. Secondary sexual characters, being so far as males are concerned, wholly the result of eagerness in courtship, cannot appear before the time for reproduction arrives, and as it is a law of heredity that peculiarities of structure which are developed late in life, when transmitted to offspring, appear only in the sex in which they originated, these variations of structure are confined to males.  
According to Mr. Darwin’s theory little differ36ence exists between the sexes until the age of reproduction arrives. It is at this time, the time when the secondary sexual characters begin to assert themselves, that the preponderating superiority of the male begins to manifest itself.
 
Although, according to Mr. Darwin, variability denotes low organization and shows that the various organs of the body have not become specialized to perform properly their legitimate functions, it is to characters correlated with and dependent upon these varying parts that the male has ultimately become superior to the female. If these characters, namely, pugnacity, perseverance, and courage have been such important factors in establishing male superiority, too much care may not be exercised in analyzing them and in tracing their origin and subsequent development.
 
Sexual Selection resembles artificial selection save that the female takes the part of the human breeder. She represents the intelligent factor or cause in the operations involved. If this be true, if it is through her will, or through some agency or tendency latent in her constitution that Sexual Selection comes into play, then she is the primary cause of the very characters through which man’s superiority over woman has been gained. As a stream may not rise higher than its source, or as the creature may not surpass its creator in excellence, it is difficult to understand the processes by which man, through Sexual Selection, has become superior to woman.
 
37
 
He who admits the principle of Sexual Selection will be led to the remarkable conclusion that the nervous system not only regulates most of the existing functions of the body, but has indirectly influenced the progressive development of various bodily structures and certain mental qualities. Courage, pugnacity, perseverance, strength and size of body, weapons of all kinds, musical organs, both vocal and instrumental, bright colours, and ornamental appendages have all been indirectly gained by the one sex or the other, through the exertion of choice, the influence of love and jealousy, and the appreciation of the beautiful in sound, colour, or form; and these powers of the mind manifestly depend on the development of the brain.22
 
While the female has been performing the higher functions in the processes of reproduction, through her force of will, or through her power of choice, she has also been the directing and controlling agency in the development of those characters in the male through which, when the human species was reached, he was enabled to attain a limited degree of progress.
 
Since the origin of secondary sexual characters is so clearly manifest, perhaps it will be well for us at this point to examine also their actual significance, that we may be enabled to note the foundation upon which the dogma of male superiority rests.
 
Although the gay colouring of male birds and fishes has usually been regarded as an indication38 of their superiority over their sombre-coloured mates, later investigations are proving that these pigments represent simply unspecialized material, and an effort of the system to cast out the waste products which have accumulated as a result of excessive ardour in courtship. The same is true of combs, wattles, and other skin excrescences; they show a feverish condition of the skin in the over-excited males, whose temperature is usually much higher than is that of females. We are assured that the skin eruptions of male fishes at the spawning season “seem more pathological than decorative.”23 In the processes of reproduction, the undeveloped atoms given off from each varying part are reproduced only in the male line.
 
The beautiful colouring of male birds and fishes, and the various appendages acquired by males throughout the various orders below man, and which, so far as they themselves are concerned, serve no other useful purpose than to aid them in securing the favours of the females, have by the latter been turned to account in the processes of reproduction. The female made the male beautiful that she might endure his caresses.
 
From the facts elaborated by our guides in this matter, it would seem that the female is the primary unit of creation, and that the male functions are simply supplemental or complementary. Parthenogenesis among many of the lower forms of life would seem to favour this view. We are given39 to understand that under conditions favouring katabolism, the males among Rotifera wear themselves out, under which conditions the females become katabolic enough to do without them.
 
Among the common Rotifera, the males are almost always very different from the females, and much smaller. Sometimes they seem to have dwindled out of existence altogether, for only the females are known. In other cases, though present, they entirely fail to accomplish their proper function of fertilization, and, as parthenogenesis obtains, are not only minute, but useless.24
 
So long as food is plentiful, the females continue to raise parthenogenetic offspring, but with the advent of hard times, when food is scarce or of a poor quality, the parthenogenetic series is interrupted by the appearance of males. Although, unaided by the male, the female of certain species is able to reproduce, he has never been able to propagate without her co-operation.
 
Concerning the conditions which underlie the production of females and males we have the following from The Evolution of Sex, by Geddes and Thomson:
 
Such conditions as deficient or abnormal food, high temperature, deficient light, moisture, and the like, are obviously such as would tend to induce a preponderance of waste over repair—a katabolic habit of body,—and these conditions tend to result in the40 production of males. Similarly, the opposed set of factors, such as abundant and rich nutrition, abundant light and moisture, favour constructive processes, i.e., make for an anabolic habit, and these conditions result in the production of females.25
 
Among the lower orders of animal life, notably insects, we are assured that an excess of females denotes an excess of formative force, and that an excess of males indicates a deficiency on the part of the parents. In the case of bees, the queen, which is the highest development, is produced only under the best circumstances of nutrition, while the birth of the drone, which is the lowest result of propagation, is preceded by extremely low conditions.
 
The working bee which, being an imperfect female, may not be impregnated, will, however, give birth to parthenogenetic offspring, such offspring always being male. In the case of Aphides, the sex depends on the conditions of nutrition. During the summer months while food is plentiful and nutritious, females are parthenogenetically produced, but with the return of autumn and the attendant scarcity of food, together with the low temperature, only males are brought forth. In seasons in which food is abundant, Cladocera and Aphides lose the power to copulate; they nevertheless multiply parthenogenetically at a marvellous rate of increase,
 
41
 
giving birth to generation after generation of parthenogenetic females, so long as the environment remains favourable, but giving birth, as soon as the conditions of life become less favourable, to males and to females which require fertilization.26
 
It is stated also that if caterpillars are shut up and starved before entering the chrysalis stage, the butterflies which make their appearance are males, while the highly nourished caterpillars are sure to come out females. In the case of moths unnutritious food produces only males.
 
Experiments show that when tadpoles are left to themselves the average number of females is about fifty-seven in the hundred, but that under favourable conditions the percentage of females is greatly increased. The following is the result of one series of observations by Yung. In the first brood, by feeding one set with beef, the percentage of females was raised from fifty-four to seventy-eight; in the second, with fish, the percentage rose from sixty-one to eighty-one, which in the third set, when the nutritious flesh of frogs was supplied, only eight males were produced to ninety-two females.27
 
It is stated that although scarcity of food is an important factor in determining the appearance of males, temperature also plays an important part in their production. Kurg having found a42 few males in midsummer in pools which were nearly dried up was induced to attempt their artificial production. So successful was he, that “he obtained the males of forty species, in all of which the males had previously been unknown.” He proved that
 
any unfavourable change in the water causes the production of males, which appear as it dries up, as its chemical constitution changes, when it acquires an unfavourable temperature, or, in general, when there is a decrease in prosperity.
 
From which observations and many others quoted from Düring, Professor Brooks concludes that “among animals and plants, as well as in mankind, a favourable environment causes an excess of female births, and an unfavourable environment an excess of male births.”28 According to Rolph, also, the percentage of females increases with the increase of favourable conditions of temperature and food.
 
Among insects the males appear first, thus showing that less time is required to develop them from the larval state. Of this Mr. Darwin says: “Throughout the great class of insects the males almost always are the first to emerge from the pupal state, so that they generally abound for a time before any female can be seen.”29
 
Recent observations show that among the43 human species nutrition plays a significant part in determining sex. Statistics prove that in towns and in well-to-do families there is a preponderance of girls, while in the country, and among the poor, more boys are born; also, that immediately following epidemics, wars, and famines, there is an excess of male births. On examination, it was found that in Saxony “the ratio of boy-births rose and fell with the price of food, and that the variation was most marked in the country.”30
 
That the female represents a higher development than the male is proved throughout all the various departments of nature. Among plants, staminate flowers open before pistillate, and are much more abundant, and less differentiated from the leaves, showing that they are less developed, and that slighter effort, a less expenditure of force, is necessary to form the male than the female. A male flower represents an intermediate stage between a leaf and a perfect, or we might say, a female flower, and the germ which produces the male would, in a higher stage, produce the female.31 In reference to the subject of the relative positions of the female and male flowers in the Sedges, Mr. Meehan observes:
 
In some cases the spike of the male flowers terminates the scape; in others the male flowers occupy the44 lower place; in others, again they have various places on the same spike. It will be generally noted that this is associated together with lines of nutrition,—those evidently favoured by comparative abundance sustaining the female flowers.
 
To this Mr. Meehan adds:
 
And this is indeed a natural consequence, for, as vitality exists so much longer in the female than the male flowers, which generally die when the pollen has matured, it is essential that they should have every advantage in this respect.32
 
The most perfect and vigorous specimens of coniferous trees are of the female kind. In its highest and most luxuriant stage the larch bears only female blossoms, but so soon as its vigour is lost male flowers appear, after which death soon ensues.
 
In The Evolution of Sex, by Geddes and Thomson, is the following:
 
In phraseology which will presently become more intelligible and concrete, the males live at a loss, are more katabolic,—disruptive changes tending to preponderate in the sum of changes in their living matter or protoplasm. The females, on the other hand, live at a profit, are more anabolic,—constructive processes predominating in their life, whence indeed the capacity of bearing offspring.33
 
45
 
Among the lower orders of animals, there appears an excess of males, and among the higher forms of life, man included, the fact that the male is the result of the cruder, less developed germ, has been clearly shown, not alone by the facts brought forward by Mr. Darwin, but by those enunciated by all reliable writers on this subject. As a result of the excessive eagerness in males, and the consequent expenditure of vital force among the lower orders of life to find the female and secure her favours, they are generally smaller in size, with a higher body temperature and shorter life. Among the higher orders, the human species, for instance, although man is larger than woman, he is still shorter lived, has less endurance, is more predisposed to organic diseases, and is more given to reversion to former types, facts which show that his greater size is not the result of higher development. It is noted that the liability to assume characters proper to lower orders belongs in a marked degree to males of all the higher species—man included.
 
Doubtless man’s greater size (a modification which has been acquired through Sexual Selection) has been of considerable value to him in the struggle for existence to which he has been subjected, but the indications are already strong that after a certain stage of progress has been reached, even this modification of structure will prove useless, if not an actual hindrance to him. On mechanical principles, every increase of size requires more than46 a corresponding increase of strength and endurance to balance the activities and carry on the vital processes, yet such have been the conditions of man’s development, that his excess of strength does not compensate for his greater size and weight, while his powers of endurance fall below those of women.
 
Although the conditions of the past have required a vast expenditure of physical energy, the activities of the future will make no such demand. Nature’s forces directed by the human will and intellect are already lessening the necessity for an excessive outlay of bodily strength. It may be truly said that electricity and the innumerable mechanical devices now in use have well nigh supplanted the necessity for great physical exertion. Even war, should it be continued, which is not likely, will be conducted without it. Destructive weapons based upon high-power explosives require little physical effort for their manipulation. The pugilist represents the departing glory of male physical strength.
 
We are informed by Mr. Darwin that by a vast number of measurements taken of various parts of the human body in different races, during his Novara Expedition, it was found that the men in almost every case presented a greater range of variations than women, and, as Mr. Wood has carefully attended to the variations of the muscles of man, Mr. Darwin quotes from him that47 “the greatest number of abnormalities in each subject is found in males.” He adduces also the testimony of several others who have practically investigated this subject, all of whom agree in their statements that variations in the muscles are more frequent in males than in females. These variations usually consist in a reversion to lower types—a reversion in which muscles proper to lower forms of life make their appearance.
 
In an examination of forty male subjects, there was in nineteen of them a rudimentary muscle found which is designated as the ischio-pubic, and in three others of the forty was observed a ligament which represents this muscle; but, in an examination by the same person of thirty female subjects, in only two of them was this muscle developed on both sides, whilst in three others the rudimentary ligament was present. Thus while we observe that about fifty-five per cent. of the males examined were possessed of muscles proper to lower orders, in only about seventeen per cent. of the females under observation did this reversion appear. In a single male subject, seven muscular variations proper to apes were indicated.
 
Numberless cases might be cited in which reversions and abnormalities have been developed only in the male line. Of the porcupine men of the Lambert family who lived in London last century, Haeckel says:
 
Edward Lambert, born in 1717, was remarkable for a most unusual and monstrous formation of the48 skin. His whole body was covered with a horny substance, about an inch thick, which rose in the form of numerous thorn-shaped and scale-like processes, more than an inch long. This monstrous formation on the outer skin, or epidermis, was transmitted by Lambert to his sons and grandsons, but not to his granddaughters.34
 
According to the testimony of those who have made a study of the various abnormalities in the human organism, the ears of men present a greater range of variations than do those of women, and the cases in which supernumerary digits appear in males are as two to one, compared with females presenting the same structural defect. Of one hundred and fifty-two cases of this kind tabulated by Burt Wilder, eighty-six were males and thirty-nine females, the sex of the remaining twenty-seven being unknown. Mr. Darwin wishes us to remember, however, that “women would more frequently endeavour to conceal a deformity of this kind than men.” Although it is quite natural for women to abhor abnormalities and deformities, it is to be doubted if they would succeed for any considerable length of time in concealing the deformity of an organ which, like the hand, is usually uncovered, and which in waking hours, is in almost constant use.
 
One of the principal characters which distinguishes the human animal from the lower orders is the absence of a natural covering for the skin.49 That mankind have descended from hair-covered progenitors is the inevitable conclusion of all those who accept the theory of the evolution of species, the straggling hairs which are scattered over the body of man being the rudiments of a uniform hairy coat which enveloped his ancestors.
 
We are informed that a hairy covering for the body, pointed ears which were capable of movement, and a tail provided with the proper muscles, were among the undoubted characters of the antecedents of the human race. In addition to these, among the males, were developed great canine teeth which were used as weapons against their rivals.
 
As the lack of a hairy coat for the body constitutes one of the principal characteristics which distinguishes man from the lower animals, it would seem that a knowledge of the order of time in which the two sexes became divested of their natural covering would serve as a hint to indicate their relative stages of development. In a paper read some years ago at a meeting of the Anthropological Institute in London, Miss Bird (Mrs. Bishop) the well-known traveller, gave a description of the Ainos, a race of people found chiefly in the island of Yezo, and who, it is thought probable, were the original inhabitants of Japan. The peculiarity of this people is, that the men are covered with a thick coat of black hair. The women, we are told,50 “are not hairy like the men,” but “have soft brown skins.” Upon this subject of hairiness, Mr. Darwin says:
 
As the body of woman is less hairy than that of man, and as this character is common to all races, we may conclude that it was our female semi-human ancestors who were first divested of hair, and that this occurred at an extremely remote period before the several races had diverged from a common stock.
 
After our female ancestors had acquired the new character, nudity, they must have transmitted it to their own sex, and by continually selecting their mates from among the least hairy, in process of time males too would become divested of their animal covering. Whether or not our semi-human ancestors were subjected to the scorching heat of the torrid zone, nudity must have been better suited to their improved condition, not wholly, however, because of its greater beauty and comfort, but because it was a condition better suited to cleanliness; and, as the hairy coat had become a useless appendage, or was not necessary to their changed conditions, it disappeared from the bodies of females, while doubtless for ages it was retained upon the bodies of males. That hairiness denotes a low stage of development, Mr. Darwin incautiously admits, yet in dealing with this subject he is not disposed to carry his admission to its legitimate conclusion by treating its appearance on the body of man as a test in determining the com51parative development of the female and male organisms.
 
Idiots, who, by the way, are more numerous among males than among females, are frequently covered with hair, and by the acquirement of other characters more often revert to lower animal types. Mr. Darwin assures us that around sores of long standing stiff hairs are liable to appear, thus showing that hair on the body is indicative of undeveloped tissues and low constitutional conditions. The same writer, however, does not neglect to inform us that the loss of man’s hairy covering was rather an injury to him than otherwise; but whether or not the diminution in the quality of prehension in his toes, the loss of his canines, and the disappearance of his tail have likewise proved detrimental to him, Mr. Darwin fails to state.
 
The fact that throughout the vertebrate kingdom males possess rudiments of the various parts appertaining to the reproductive system which properly belong to females, is regarded as evidence that some remote progenitor of this kingdom must have been hermaphrodite, or androgynous, especially as it has been ascertained that at a very early embryonic period both sexes possess true male and female glands. As high in the scale of life as the mammalian class, males are said to possess rudiments of a uterus, while at the same time mammary glands are plainly manifest; which fact would seem to show that in the high state of52 development indicated by this great class, male organs have not through the processes of differentiation become specialized for the performance of their legitimate functions. In reference to the subject of atavism Mr. Darwin cites as a case of reversion to a former type, an instance in which a man was the possessor of two pairs of mamm?.
 
It is true that instances have been observed in which characters peculiar to males have been developed in females. This phenomenon, however, seldom appears among individuals of the higher orders, and among the lower forms of life where it occurs, it is always manifested under low circumstances of nutrition or in cases of old age, disease, or loss of vitality. Instances are cited in which hens, after they have become old or diseased, have taken on characters peculiar to males.
 
In all “old-settled” countries women are in excess of men, and this is true, notwithstanding the fact that more boys are born than girls. Regarding the excess of the male over female births, Mr. Darwin quotes from Professor Faye, who says:
 
A still greater preponderance of males would be met with, if death struck both sexes in equal proportion in the womb and during birth. But the fact is, that for every one hundred still-born females, we have in several countries from 134.6 to 144.9 still-born males.35
 
Statistics show that during the first four or five years of life, more male children die than female. 53
 
Although whenever throughout Mr. Darwin’s Descent of Man he has been pleased to deal with the subject of structural variations, he has given us to understand that they are injurious to the constitution, and although he has shown that their appearance is much more frequent in men than in women, yet he does not seem to realize whither his admissions are leading him. He has proved by seemingly well-established facts that the female organism is freer from imperfections than the male, and therefore that it is less liable to derangements; also, that being more highly specialized, it is less susceptible to injury under unfavourable conditions; yet, in attempting to explain the reason why so many more male than female infants succumb to the exigencies of birth, he expresses the opinion that the size of the body and “especially of the head” being greater in males, they would be “more liable to be injured during parturition.”
 
Among the reasons urged by Mr. Darwin to account for the excess of women over men in all “old-settled” countries, is that of the exposure of grown men to various dangers, and their tendency to emigrate. Doubtless there is more emigration among men than among women, still men do not usually emigrate to a wilderness and rarely to sparsely settled countries. When men emigrate from one civilized country, they usually go to54 another civilized country; yet in all old-settled countries women are in excess of men. While the dangers to which men are exposed because of their greater physical activity have been many, and the accidents liable to occur from their harder struggle for existence more numerous than those to which women have been subjected, still it would seem that the danger to female life, incident to the artificial relations of the sexes under our present semi-civilized conditions, is more than an offset for that to which men are liable.
 
The fact must be borne in mind, however, that the diseases and physical disabilities of women, at the present time, although dangerous to health and life, are not organic, and will therefore disappear as soon as through higher conditions they are allowed the free expression of their own will in matters pertaining to the sexual relation. As the diseases peculiar to the female constitution are not caused by structural defects, but, on the contrary, are due to the overstimulation of the animal instincts in her male mate, or, to the disparity between her stage of development and his, they have not materially injured her constitution nor shortened her average duration of life, neither have they lessened her capacity for improvement.
 
With reference to the women of Greenland, Cranz says that while they
 
remain with their parents they are well off; but from twenty years of age till death, their life is one series55 of anxieties, wretchedness, and toil, yet, in spite of all their cares, toils, and vexations the women commonly arrive at a greater age than the men.36
 
That the imperfections of the male organism are already beginning to interpose themselves between man and many of the occupations and activities of advancing civilization, is only too apparent.
 
Sight, far more than any other sense, is the most intellectual, yet in the development of the visual organs it has been proved that men are especially deficient. Dr. Andrew Willson assures us that “colour-blindness is a condition which is certainly capable of transmission to the progeny. In one family the males alone were affected through seven generations.”
 
In an examination which was carried on some years ago under the supervision of Dr. Jeffries, among the pupils of the Boston schools, in which were 14,469 boys and young men, and 13,458 girls and young women, it was found that about one male in every twenty-five was colour-blind, while the same defect among the girls and young women was extremely rare, only 0.066 per cent. of them being thus affected.37
 
At a convention held in the city of Chicago for the purpose of organizing an association for educational reform, the teacher of drawing56 in the St. Paul schools made a statement that “four per cent. of all male pupils were colour-blind, while only one-tenth of one per cent. of female pupils were so affected.” No explanation was offered for this strange fact; indeed, it was pronounced a mystery, “even oculists and surgeons having given it up as impenetrable.”
 
That defective vision is beginning to interfere with the activities of men, is shown by the fact that in many instances, in later times, colour tests have been required to determine fitness of applicants for positions in various departments of commercial enterprise. In this country, during the last fifty years, much attention has been given to the subject of visual defects in seamen, railroadmen, and other persons occupying positions of responsibility in which unimpaired vision is an important qualification. In response to a request sent by the German Government through its minister to the Surgeon-General of the United States Army, for statistical and other information on the subject of colour-blindness, Mr. Charles E. Pugh, General Manager of the Pennsylvania Railroad, in September, 1884, sent to William Thomson, M.D., surgical expert for the same company, the following statement:
 
Total number examined on lines east of Erie 25,158
Colour-blind 481
Defective vision 661
57
 
Of this report Dr. Thomson says:
 
The apparently small percentage of colour-blind in this table may be ascribed to the non-application of men who knew their deficiency, and to the fact that men in the service, knowing their defect, would leave the road before examination, and thus escape detection, and be enabled to gain employment on other roads where no examinations are required.38
 
In several departments of the national government, attempts have been made to guard against the dangers resulting from imperfect sight. In the examination of recruits, the War Department at Washington, some years ago, issued orders that bits of coloured pasteboard, or “test cards” be used for determining the power of individuals to distinguish objects at a distance, while worsteds of various hues were employed to ascertain their ability to distinguish colour. In the Treasury and Naval Departments were ordered similar examinations, in which the power to distinguish colour was a necessary qualification in the case of all persons seeking employment therein.
 
In the examinations ordered by navigation and railroad companies to protect themselves and the public against disaster resulting from imperfect vision in their employees, tests have been made. Among the requirements imposed by law, applying to engineers, brakemen, and firemen, in the State of Connecticut, are the following:58 “Unobstructed visual field, normal visual acuteness, and freedom from colour-blindness.”
 
If Dr. Jeffries’s investigation in the Boston public schools and the report of the officers of the Pennsylvania Railroad are to serve as a criterion in judging of the extent to which impaired vision is developed in men, or if among them one in every twenty-five is defective in the colour sense, the inference seems unavoidable that the proportion of them unfitted for railroad and steamboat service, for military duty, and for various important government positions, must be large. Hence, by these tests alone may be observed something of the extent to which, under the higher conditions which are approaching, the imperfect development in men of this one organ (the eye) may cripple their energies and check those activities which, in many instances, are best suited to their tastes and inclinations.
 
Nor is this defective vision developed in men a peculiarity which is confined within the limits of our own country. In Europe, investigations analogous to those instituted in America have been followed by the same or similar results. Until a comparatively recent time this subject has received little or no attention, for the reason that the processes of civilization and the various activities of life have not, hitherto, demanded a correct or highly developed colour sense; but with the requirements of more highly civilized conditions, in vocations demanding more diversified and59 complicated physical and mental activities, it is plain that man, because of this organic imperfection, must labour under continuous disadvantages. Then add to defective vision his lack of physical endurance, his liability to various organic affections caused by structural defects, and his abnormal appetites which are constantly demanding for their gratification the things which are injurious to his mental and physical constitution, and we are enabled to judge, to some extent, of the obstacles against which, in the struggle for existence, the future man will find himself obliged to contend.
 
Not only is man’s sense of sight less perfectly developed than is woman’s, but his sense of touch is less acute. The hand, directed as it is by the brain, is the most completely differentiated member of the human structure. It may almost be said of the hand, that it assists the brain in performing its functions. The female hand, however, is capable of delicate distinctions which the male has no means of determining. A dispatch from Washington says of the women of the Treasury Department:
 
So superior is their skill in handling paper money that they accomplish results that would be utterly unattainable without them. It has been found by long experience that a counterfeit may go through half the banks in the country without being detected, until it comes back, often torn and mutilated, into the hands of the Treasury women. Then it is certain of detection. They shut their eyes and feel of a note60 if they suspect it. If it feels wrong, in half a minute they point out the incongruities of the counterfeit.
 
Although throughout the ascending scale of life, the female has been expending all her energy in the performance of her legitimate functions—functions which, as we have seen, are of a higher order than those performed by the male, through causes which will be discussed farther on in these pages, within the later centuries of human existence—she has been temporarily overcome by the destructive forces developed in the opposite sex, forces which are without the line of true development, and which through overstimulation and encouragement have overleaped the bounds of normal activity, and have therefore become disruptive and injurious.
 
During the past five thousand years, woman’s reproductive functions have been turned into means of subsistence, and under the peculiar circumstances of her environment, her “struggle for existence” has involved physical processes far more disastrous to life and health than are those to which man has been subjected. Owing to the peculiar condition of woman’s environment, there has been developed within her more delicate and sensitive organism an alarming degree of functional nervousness; yet, with the gradual broadening of her sphere of activity, and the greater exercise of personal rights, this tendency to nervous derangement is gradually becoming61 lessened. That there is reserve force in woman sufficient to overcome the evil results of the supremacy of the animal instincts during the last five thousand or six thousand years of human existence, from present indications seems more than likely.
 
Commenting on the subject of nervousness, and the degree in which it is manifested in civilized countries, and especially among civilized women, Dr. Beard says:
 
Women, with all their nervousness—and, in civilized lands, women are more nervous, immeasurably, than men, and suffer more from general and special nervous diseases—yet live quite as long as men, if not somewhat longer; their greater nervousness and far greater liability to functional diseases of the nervous system being compensated for by their smaller liability to acute and inflammatory disorders, and various organic nervous diseases, likewise, such as the general paralysis of insanity.39
 
According to Maudsley women “seldom suffer from general paralysis.” This disease is frequently inherited, and is sometimes the result of alcoholic and other excesses.40
 
Regarding the dangers to which women are exposed by excessive and useless maternity, Dr. Beard remarks:
 
The large number of cases of laceration at childbirth and the prolonged and sometimes even life-enduring62 illness resulting from them, are good reasons for the terror which the processes of parturition inspires in the minds of American women today.
 
However, that the dangers incident to parturition, and the excessive nervousness which characterizes civilized women, are not necessary adjuncts of civilization, but, on the contrary, are a result of the unchecked disruptive forces developed in man, and the consequent drain on the vital energies of woman, will be seen, so soon as through the cultivation of the higher faculties developed in and transmitted through females, the lower nature of males has finally been brought within its legitimate bounds.