Further Evidences in Support of the Biological and Mendelian Propositions Advanced in Book I.

I

The Male is the impelling force in Physical Development, or Adaptation to environment

Scientific stock-breeding supplies valuable practical examples of applied Genetics, or the Science of Heredity.

Although artificial, in the sense that the creatures of the Stock-yard are not mated by law of Natural Selection, nor are they bred or reared under normal environmental conditions, the circumstance that breeders are breeding for special characteristics, and mate the parents with a view to the transmission and the accentuation of such, provides important indications regarding hereditary influence and its determinant factors.

Mr. Horace G. Regnart, who has done much to establish Stock-breeding on a scientific basis, kindly furnishes me with the following interesting and suggestive data:

"We Breeders pay more attention to the bull because he can sire fifty calves yearly; while the cow can produce only one. One can afford to pay a thousand guineas for a bull, whereas one cannot afford fifty cows at the same price. And the purchase of a first-class bull is the cheapest way of getting a good herd. The history of practically every great herd is the history of some particular bull. As we say, 'a bull is half the herd.' It is equally true to say that every great bull is the son of a great cow. With one highly-prepotent bull we can raise a high-class herd, even if we start with second-rate females; while a bad bull will ruin the best herd in the county. It is for this reason that we 'put all our money' on the bull."

All of which supports my theory that the male is the impelling agency in Adaptation to Environment, or evolutionary development on the plane of physics, and that such progressive development is achieved by way of the male traits being Dominant upon this plane, and manifesting, accordingly, in the physical terms of stature and muscle and force-production.

The male being the determinant agent in the physical characteristics of size and flesh and nervous energy—for which breeders of Live-stock are making—the bull is "half the herd." "With one highly-prepotent bull," a high-class herd may be raised, even though inaugurated with second-rate females. Whilst "a bad bull will ruin the best herd in the county." Akin to which is the circumstance that, in two generations, the improvement which occurs in the offspring of a New Forest pony-mare when mated with a horse, lapses; the descendants reverting to the type of the New Forest pony.

If, however, the male, being the agent of Adaptation, determines progressive development in the direction of such physical traits as further fit species to its material environment, the female it is, that, being the agency of the Evolution of Life (and of the equipment of species in terms of Life, accordingly) supplies offspring with the Vital potential of living cells and vital organs—heart, lungs, digestive and assimilative organs and functions—which, by engendering the multiple functions and vital processes of Life, sustain the existence and the powers of the organism in relation to environment. The female, moreover, provides it with the Vital potential of reproductive organs for the transmission of types ever further evolved and adapted, in terms both of Life and Adaptation.

The male thus broadly sketches out the lines and supplies the initiative of structural development. The female supplements the sketch with the structural potential of living cells, whereby structural development is achieved; as too with the vital potential of organs whereby living organisation is sustained and transmitted.

The great sire, bull or man, generates the great daughter. But since Life is earlier in origin and precedes Development, the great mother it must be who first engenders the great son. Because, as I have already pointed out, Life and Reproductive-Energy must exist in the potential before they can evolve upon the plane of personal development. In other words, function precedes structure. The potential of both function and structure must precede the development of either on the plane of Life.

Woman, accordingly, is Creatrix of the Race, because in her the Race becomes potential. Man is Artificer of the Race, however, because from him the Race receives its powers of concrete development.

For progressive evolutionary advance, therefore, every new generation of females must contribute a new complement of Vital potential, equal in potence to the new complement of Developmental initiative which the new generation of males contribute, and by way of which the female Vital potential is differentiated into further concrete powers. Fruitless for one parent to supply a finer complement than the other is able to render in terms, respectively, of Life or Development. The female potential must be adequate to energise the male powers of differentiation. The male powers must be adequate to differentiate the female potential.

II

The female supplies the Typal and Vital Potentials of Adaptation

To Mr. Regnart, I am indebted for the following further data, which seem further to support my view:

"Ursula Raglan was a Beef-cow that milked heavily. To a Beef-bull, she produced Gainford Champion—a great bull. While to a Dairy-bull, she produced the dam of Priceless Princess—about the best Dairy-cow that ever looked through a halter."

Here we find the Vital-potential indispensable to the equipment of great offspring, proved great in the mother, by her Female vital-function of lactation. While her respective bull-mates appear as the determinant factors which differentiate this Vital potential in offspring, respectively, into the Beef-traits (stature and muscle, that is) or the Milking-traits (Vital function, that is). The very term "Dairy-bull," signifying a male with power to transmit to female descendants the purely Female trait of milking, is evidence, in itself, of a female trait, derived by a male from his mother, passing into the potential, and lying dormant, or Recessive, for a generation, in his male organisation, and then emerging again in his daughter.

The great bull is sire of a great cow—because he was son of a great cow. And he is a great bull because he received from his dam a great female Vital-potential, for differentiation into greatness of the male traits that characterise great males. And in his turn, he may sire a cow greater than his mother, because in passing on to his daughter the great female Vital-potential of his mother, he passes on a female potential of greatness to which his own male inherence of greatness has added a further power of Differentiation. This increased Male power of differentiation, descending in the female line, however, manifests in traits of increased Female functioning—the function of milking, that is.

The daughter inherits thus from her father the Female potential of her paternal grandmother, with new power of Male differentiation acquired by its residence during a generation (so to speak) in a male organisation. Which new power, when reawakened to function in a female organism, manifests in a further degree of Femaleness.

Male development having progressed along lines of increasing brain- and nervous power, which the female has ever further inherited, Female development has progressed along lines of such increasing brain-power as has enabled her to transform her native simple and undifferentiated Femaleness into ever further developed and more complex Female traits, or functional and nervous characteristics.

While, on the other hand, since Female evolution has proceeded along lines of increasing Life, or Vital Power, which the male has ever further inherited this increasing Vital power it has been that has served as potential for the evolution of his Maleness in terms of higher brain- and nervous power.

The great cow is mother of a great bull because she was daughter of a great sire. And she was a great cow because she received from her sire a great male complement of developmental power, which imparted to her Recessive, and undifferentiated Femaleness, further power of functioning as female characteristics. And she may mother a son greater even than her sire because the great male Developmental impetus of her father becomes in her a greater Vital potential; which, descending in the male line, engenders further power for the further differentiation of male characteristics.

III

Evolution of Species and evolution of the Individual occur on different planes

The Evolution of Species progresses in every generation by way of each Sex having derived from the other Sex a new and opposite potential to engender, in every alternate generation, the further evolution of its Sex-traits along its own (and contrary) lines.

It may be considered therefore that Type, or Species, evolves to higher inherences by way of progressive divergences of Sex-characteristics. While the Evolution of the individual progresses in every generation in proportion as parents of both sexes had mated, in the previous generation, with such members of the opposite sex as were best fitted to supply, in the gametes contributed to offspring, complements which, by union with their own, so matched and supplemented their own as to have quickened and energised the development of offspring to the fullest and the most efficient issues. In any line, however, a strain of greatness or of other inherence descends in alternating succession, now in the female, now in the male line; receding now into the potential, and then evolving in development. So that while the Individual normally evolves in every generation, the Type evolves only in alternate generations.

The evolution of Type, or Species, is the intrinsic function of the spontaneous Evolution of Life into two orders of Sex. It occurs on a wholly different plane from that of the evolution of the Individual. But by way of his, or her, complement to the biological constitution of offspring, members of both sexes contribute alike to the evolution of Species and to that of the Individual—according as such complement enhances the power of the traits of the opposite Sex to manifest, and further to evolve in offspring.

The intensification in the one sex of its own inherences stimulates a proportional intensification of the opposite inherences in the other Sex, both as regards the evolution of the Type and of the Individual. The phenomenon would seem to be akin to that increase of one electrical potential evoking a proportional increase of the other electrical potential, to complement it. When one sex fails to supply its due potential, or complement, to the other, the evolution both of Type and Individual receives a check.

And because the evolution of Type is achieved by the Germ-plasm derived from a parent of one sex obtaining new increment from being invested in the organisation of offspring of the opposite sex, it is not until the new Typal-inherence of this Germ-plasm is revivified again in the organisation of a member of the Sex from which the plasm was derived, that such new impulse manifests. Hence the phenomenon of characteristics being transmitted from parents to offspring of opposite sex. So that daughters of normal womanly organisation reproduce the Typal characteristics of their fathers' maternal line; while in sons of normal male organisation those of their mothers' paternal line emerge.

Hence too, the reversion of offspring of hybrid plants to the types,—pure Dominant and pure Recessive—of their grandparents.

IV

Progressive segregation of Male and Female traits in opposite sides of body ever further intensifies and differentiates their intrinsic qualities

The biological constitution of humans and of the other higher organisms differentiating them into two opposite symmetrical sides, in which, as development rises higher in the scale, the Dominance, or Maleness, in them is ever further and more perfectly segregated from the Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them, secures the progressive intensification, respectively, of Maleness or of Femaleness in them, by ever further ranging the factors, or traits, of these on opposite sides of the biological equation; and by thus more effectively centralising the powers, according to sex, in one or the other side thereof.

Mendel's peas, not thus differentiated into two sides, are bi-sexual and self-fertilising. Of the original stock, that order in which Dominant traits are prepotent is differentiating toward a male genus, however. While the Recessives are differentiating toward a female genus. Although regarded as "pure" Dominants and "pure" Recessives, they are nevertheless hybrids in respect of Sex. Being self-fertilising, both Dominants and Recessives are of low power, alike for reproduction and development. Because the Dominance, or Male developmental power, of the Recessives being inhibited by the Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them, is of low Vigour. While the Recessiveness, or Female vital power in the Dominants being unduly expended by the Dominance, or Maleness, in them, is of low Vitality. The male sex-cells of the self-fertilising Dominants thus fertilise female sex-cells of low vitality. While the female sex-cells of the self-fertilising Recessives are fertilised by male sex-cells of low vigour.

In cross-breeding, the conditions cease not only to be those of self-fertilising, but they cease, moreover, to be those of the close inbreeding of self-fertilisation. In the "hybrids" obtained by crossing the higher-vigoured male sex-cells of the "pure" Dominants with the higher-vitalised female sex-cells of the "pure" Recessives, the Dominants—because Dominance is prepotent for exterior characteristics—submerge the external traits of the Recessives, which are prepotent for vital and internal functioning. Such Dominants are a bi-sexual species in which the male is prepotent. And to be male, means that they have expended, in terms of structural development, a great proportion of the female Vital power inherent in them; thus masking the Recessive female traits in them, as regards exterior characteristics. But since reproductive power inheres in these Recessive traits, these traits are preserved in the sex-cells, equally with the Dominant traits. The plants being not only bi-sexual, but self-fertilising also, the sex-cells must obviously be bi-sexual too; in order to provide the organism with factors both of life and development. Every sex-cell is a hybrid cell, therefore; bearing both Dominant and Recessive traits. But, like their parents, in some, the Dominant, in others, the Recessive traits are prepotent. And the Dominant sex-cells mating with Dominants, the Recessives with Recessives, the original types of so-called "pure" Dominants and "pure" Recessives reappear in the third generation.

V

Self-fertilising organism is a female organism with a male organism differentiated in it

Because the female represents the Life-potential of species and the Vital potential of organisms, a self-fertilising plant or creature must be regarded as a female organism, with a male organism of Adaptation, or Differentiation, developed in it. This male organism energises both its developmental and its functioning power, and fertilises it; although the potential of structure, of growth, of function and of reproduction are engendered in the female organism. The female is the root-stock or parent-stem of all species, therefore.

If Dominance is Maleness, and Recessiveness is Femaleness, and if Dominance energises structural development while Recessiveness engenders reproduction, a Dominant self-fertilising plant is a female plant, with a male plant of superior Dominance differentiated in it. While a Recessive self-fertilising plant is a female plant of superior Recessiveness, with a male plant of inferior Dominance differentiated in it. In crossing stock of superior Dominance with stock of superior Recessiveness, the Dominant prevails over the Recessive in the general structural traits of the resulting "hybrid," but not in its reproductive inherence. The new hybrids being male in inherence, nothing is added to the female reproductive, or Vital, potential in them. The root-stock transmits to its sex-cells therefore just as its grandmother did—Recessives of her type, and Dominants of the type of the Dominant male engrafted on her, of the male grandfather of this third generation, that is. Hence reversion.

VI

Sterility of offspring of alien species proves evolution of Species and of Individual are independent phenomena

The fact that dog and wolf, when mated, breed fertile species, proves them sprung from the same root-stock. While the hybrid offspring of different species are sterile. Showing such an intrinsic incompatability of the alien complements in the zygote as, while operating as no bar to their immediate union and their development into a complete hybrid individual, nevertheless bars the incorporation of the alien breed in the Vital potential of stock.

Such sterility in the offspring of creatures of different species is weighty evidence that the Evolution of Type, or Species, and the Evolution of the Individual are wholly independent phenomena; occurring upon wholly different planes, and involving wholly different principles and sets of processes. In the mating of alien species, the two sex-cells, although of dissimilar species-inherence, unite nevertheless and develop in the maternal environment into a living entity of mongrel order. But the Germ-plasm contained in the gamete of one species will not germinate in the alien environment of an organism of alien species. No potential, either Vital or of Differentiation, is engendered, therefore, for production of offspring. Hence sterility results. The potential of a living individual is seen thus to belong to a wholly different plane of phenomena from the potential of Stock. Conditions which do not annul the powers of life and of function in the one, quench life and function in the other with the seal of sterility.

VII

Possible explanation of "Sports"

Mr. Regnart says: "We often meet with Sports. Second- and third-rate parents may produce an exceptionally fine individual, but such animals are always failures to breed from. The law of Filial Regression comes into operation. Our aim is to find families that have produced a large number of fine animals—we know then that we are on safe ground."

In these cases, it would seem that the "fine individual" results from so singularly harmonious and successful a complementing and fructifying of the parental halves in offspring as conduce to develop the best points of both; doubtless, too, to eliminate or to annul weak or faulty factors of either parental strain. Neither of such inferior-grade parents transmitting a fine lineal potential, however, the exceptional fineness of the individual is not inherent in the Germ-plasm he or she transmits to offspring. The fine characteristics of such "Sports" are not transmissible, therefore, to descendants.

Proof again of two planes of Life and Evolution, that of Species and that of the Individual. Moral, too, of the importance of fine selection in mating, since the harmonious mating of second- or third-rate parents may produce finer offspring than are born of ill-assorted matings of two finer breeds of parent.

The case is recorded of a pony about the size of a Shetland pony, which was the offspring of pedigree Shire-parents on both sides, both parents being over 17 hands. The most striking feature about the animal was that there was nothing of the horse-type about him—he was a perfect example of pony.

Shire horses are typical examples of Vigour, or developmental power, expressed in terms of stature, muscle and nervous energy. And for so long as the breeding for these characteristics was supplemented in terms of vital organs and vital functioning, by an equivalent maternal complement of Vital potential, to sustain the constitutional expenditure involved in stature, muscular equipment, and nervous energy, the breed improved in these particulars. Pushed beyond this limit, by introducing into stock further strains of Vigour, or developmental initiative, without simultaneously providing the indispensable equivalents of these in increasing Vital potentials, all at once the balance toppled, and reversion to inferior type resulted.

An excessive proportion of the Vital power of these two Pedigree Shires of great stature and great strength had been expended in the achievement of such great stature and great strength, and in the equipment of digestive and assimilative organs required to sustain these. But little had remained, accordingly, for Reproductive investments. Hence reversion in the de-vitalised stock.

One conceives of the counterpoise in Stock, of Male and Female complements, as being akin to that of the opposite and complementary curves of an arch. So long as equipoise is sustained by the perfect balance of the contrary curves, so long each re-inforces the other to support a heavy superstructure of development. Lopsidedness of either curve leads to collapse.

VIII

Vigour is Male. Vitability is Female

"Vigour," which breeders regard as a potent factor in heredity, is commonly confounded with Vital Power, or Vitability; although the two would seem to be diametrically opposite in cause, in nature and effect.

An athlete, in so-called "condition," is in the prime of Vigour; his muscular and nervous powers being at high levels of structure and of functioning. His Vital powers are proportionally at low ebb, however; as is proved by his notable lack of recuperative power in illness. He is bad subject, indeed, in respect of progress and recovery from disease.

Feeble-minded persons possess but little Vigour of brain or of body, yet their Vital power, as shown in healthy organic functioning and vitativeness, is often extraordinary. Vigour is an expression of nervous energy, and is generated by the brain. Vitability is Life-power, and results from vital organs efficient both in structure and in processes. It is engendered in the Reproductive System; which may be regarded as the power-house of Life and vital function.

Vigour is the power of Differentiation, or Individuation, of an organism, structural and functional, physical and mental, in terms of its relation to environment. Vitability is the intensification of the individualism and of the functioning of an organism in terms of Life-power.

Vigour, being katabolic, a male and a Dominant trait, manifests in man (as in plants) as Tallness, or the expenditure of vital energy upon the material plane, in growth and stature; as too in functional initiative and activity, both physical and mental, on the material plane.

Vitability, being anabolic, a female and a Recessive trait, manifests as Dwarfness, or the conservation of vital energy upon the material plane, in respect of growth and stature; as too in weakness, or inhibition of vigour and activity, both physical and mental.

The male trait of Vigour makes men larger, stronger, hardier, and more resistant to disease than women are. The female trait of Vitability makes women healthier, more charged with vital power and temperament, more recuperative from disease, and longer-lived than men. The complementary inherences of Vigour and Vitability, derived respectively from the two parents, and supplementing one another in offspring, endow him or her with fine form and structure, healthy vital organs and efficient function, power of Life and nervous energy.

In the normal male, Vigour dominates Vitability; the maternal potential of Vitability being differentiated in him into its male equivalent. While in the normal female, Vigour recedes within the Female traits of vital power and healthy functioning, endurance and womanly faculty.

The opposite modes of Vigour and Vitality are well shown in disease. In vigorous men, disease may assume the type known as "sthenic"; occasioning such violent re-activity, or rebellion, of the system, and such consequent severity of symptoms as speedily exhaust the resources, and tend to fatal ending. While Vital power, being anabolic and conservative, meets the foe passively, and instead of wasting, economises the forces by moderation of symptoms; bending to the course and processes of sickness, and making thereby for recovery. Because of the lesser vitability of their cells, disease in men tends toward structural, or organic deteriorations. While disease in normal women is more often functional, merely.

In masculine women, disease is prone, as in men, to structural degenerations. Masculine women are very liable to cancer; a liability they transmit as heritage to offspring of both sexes. Hence the increasing masculinity of latter-day women has entailed upon the race an increased liability to cancer and to other structural degeneration. This liability has assumed such grave proportions as to occur in children even, showing in the abnormal growths, "adenoids" now so prevalent as to have become "the normal" of modern childhood.

IX

The living body is a highly-vitalised Vegetative organism with a highly-specialised Cerebro-nervous organism differentiated in it

Professor Cuvier said, "The nervous system is, at bottom, the whole animal; the other systems are there only to serve it."

Professor Bergson amplifies the statement:

"A higher organism is essentially a sensori-motor system installed on systems of digestion, respiration, circulation, secretion, etc., whose function it is to repair, cleanse and protect it, to create an unvarying, internal environment for it, and above all to produce its potential energy for conversion into locomotive movement."

In both statements, is recognition of the Dual differentiation of the body into an organism of Life which functions in relation to its own intrinsic being, and an organism of Consciousness which functions in relation to exterior environment. That in death from starvation, the brain and the nerves remain almost unimpaired, while all the other organs and tissues lose weight, their cells undergoing profound degenerative changes, is further indication of two distinct and separate departments of development and processes in every animal existence.

As in its Mendelian phenomena of the Segregation of its Contrasting Traits, and the Dominance and Recessiveness of these in constitution and heredity, so, in its living organisation, the human body is extraordinarily and in a number of ways essentially plant-like. The brain and the nervous system may be regarded, indeed, as a highly-differentiated Cerebro-Nervous organism grafted upon a simpler Vital, and vegetative body, from which, as from a soil, it draws its life and energy: and from which, as age advances, it gradually withdraws the power of further sustaining its existence.

This Cerebro-Nervous graft perishes only because the Vegetative body on which it is installed has come to the end of its power to sustain the life of the Nervous organism picketed upon it.

The close resemblances in structure and in processes between the Cells of vegetable and animal organisms, when taken in conjunction with a number of other biological indications, justify the conclusion that living bodies are actually vegetative organisms to which have been super-added, by progressive evolutionary differentiations, faculties of Motion and of Consciousness.

(Plants are recognised as possessing rudimentary consciousness. While Growth is a mode of Motion.)

The trunk, which contains the respiratory, circulatory, nutritive and reproductive organs represents the Vitative, or Vegetative, system. The brain with its tributary spinal cord and spinal-nervous system represents the Sensori-motor organism. While the limbs are highly-differentiated implements which the Cerebro-Nervous organism has developed in the Vitative organism; to serve it with means of locomotion and of action, for the achievement of intelligent purpose.

The lungs, with their ramifications of tubes and their air-cells, closely resemble the branches and leaves of a tree, which spread into and absorb from the atmosphere the oxygen whereby it lives. While the convoluted intestines are like the roots of a tree, absorbing nurture for it from environment.

The Vegetative organism, being the agency of Life, is female in origin and inherence.

The Cerebro-spinal organism, being the agency of Adaptation, is male in origin and inherence. In both, however, the inherences of the other sex are represented.

The body resembles thus a bi-sexual plant, its root-stock being female and Recessive, with a male Dominant and differentiating organism incorporated in it.

X

Vegetative body has its own brain and nervous system and its (involuntary) muscles

This Vegetative body has its own separate (organic) brain, in the Solar Plexus—or "Abdominal brain"—and its nervous system, in the intricate "Sympathetic" system of nerves; which, in addition to administering the nutrition of the body, is intimately and closely associated, in psychology, with the brain and with the spinal-nervous system of the Psychical organism. Itself subconscious, this organic brain nevertheless contributes vital impulse and colour to Consciousness.

It possesses also its own specialised system of muscles, the "Involuntary muscles"; which are not under control of the conscious brain and will, but operate automatically—by so-called reflex action. The motions they subtend are concerned with vital functions; nutrition, respiration, circulation, assimilation, elimination, reproduction.

The Vitative organism, being vegetative of growth and passive of mode, needs rest and sun and wind and air and water for its nurture and development. With that rising of the sap in the world of vegetation which occurs in spring, kindred processes occur within the human vegetative body. It responds to the re-creative forces of its mother-earth.

With every recurring Spring-tide, youth turns again to thoughts of love, because of this natural renaissance of its vitative resources, for purposes of re-creation—both of Cells and individuals.

Old age is a permanent winter of this plant-body. Summer suns revive but little more than flickerings of its vegetative pulsings. Although the psychical life, intellectual and nervous, may be still vigorous, the sap of the plant-body no longer rises, quick and warm and fructifying, to earth's perennial call.

This plant-like body with its plant-like fruiting Cells, it is, that when charged with the graces and magnetic potences of health and high nurture, supplies the pleasing personality found not seldom in sinners, while often conspicuously lacking in saints—a seeming anomaly which has gone far to discredit the virtues.

By way of it, human personality resembles a mystical flowering plant that breathes and feels and moves; and a fruiting plant that reproduces. The Cerebro-Nervous system animates and intelligises this beautiful vessel of flesh wherein it subsists.

The vigour of its Vegetative stock, supplementing brain and nervous system by fine structure, fine stature, organic vigour, native faculty, and reproductive power, has given the Anglo-Saxon race its world-wide rule. It is to this that its women have owed their shapely frames, their healthful constitutions and their loveliness; the warm tints of hair and skin, the fresh and flower-like complexions, and the fruit-like form and bloom of cheek for which they once were famed.

Rich personal charm and sweetness of healthful condition which are all too swiftly passing from our modern women, hag-ridden by a strenuousness that is wrecking the flower-body, with its vital joy and warmth, its grace of being and its bliss of sense, its temperamental thrill and colour.

* * * * *

The doctrine of Evolution is signally incomplete unless we realise it as a sequence of progressive developments, direct and without intermission, from the simplest forms of Elemental Matter to the highest, living orders of Creation—Mineral, Vegetable, Brute and Human being progressive stages in the evolution of Life and of Consciousness; graded by links so subtly and infinitesimally constituted as to belong equally to the kingdom below and to that above them.

The subject appears full of interest and suggestion, showing all the planes of Nature, from mineral to man, linked in an unbroken line by way of this half-vegetable body of flesh, with its roots in earth and its branches in Consciousness. No more than this briefest of mentions can be given here, however.

XI

Mysterious "Internal Secretions"

Biologists tell of Dual planes of operation in the processes of every organ of the body. Because some of these function on the external plane, in visible secretions or in other ways calculable by scientific methods, and they function, too, upon an Inner and occulted, plane; in the form of mysterious "Internal Secretions," the mode and nature whereof have long baffled and eluded the most intricate scientific appliances and intellections.

What is indicated if not an Inner, and Potential, plane of Life and vital processes—a plane of Involution, or Recession (centripetal)—whereon factors of environment, air, food, water and so forth are transformed by vital involutionary processes, into potentials of living form and function? Which potentials remain latent, or Recessive, in the cells and glands secreting them, and available for transformation by evolutionary processes, into actualities of physical form and function on the Outer (centrifugal) plane of Life—the plane of Evolution.

And Life and health, together with normality of faculty and function, depend upon the perfect balance and co-ordination of these two contrary orders of factors and processes, which, I assume, are engendered, respectively, in the Male and the Female departments of living organisms of both sexes.

All the vital functions—Respiration, Circulation, Digestion, Reproduction—may be classed as Recessive functions, because they are characterised by a Recession, or withdrawal, from the Without to the Within. This is a phenomenon of the Involution of Environment, for transformation thereof into potential Life, and potential Evolutionary output.

Death is a centripetal withdrawal of the soul from the material Without to an Inner zone of Spiritual, or Potential, Being. And in due time, analogy assures us, having assimilated and transformed the resultant of a terrestrial existence into a new potential of Life, Life issues forth again, by the centrifugal impulse of re-Birth, to differentiate itself once more in living form upon the Outer plane. (Re-incarnation is, obviously, the true interpretation of Resurrection of the body, which otherwise is scientifically impossible.)

Winter withdrawal, or Involution, of the sap of Vegetation from the outer plane of functioning to the inner plane of potential Life, whereby it derives such new increment of Vital potential as, with the outgoing of sap again in the renaissance of spring, evolves in increased growth and new foliage, is further example of the principle and processes of Dominance and Recessiveness—of the female Vital impulse and the male Developmental impetus, operating in an eternal tidal rhythm of ebb and flow.

XII

Dual planes of Mentality: Outer and Material, Inner and Occult

As in the Domain of Life and vital processes, so in the Domain of Consciousness and nervous processes, there are two planes of function; an Inner and occulted plane of Mind, or potential Consciousness, and an Outer plane of material Consciousness; representing respectively afferent (or centripetal) and efferent (or outgoing) nervous currents.

Faculty and sense may be regarded as having developed in one direction along lines of the telescope, with increasing capability to horizon the Without; while they have developed simultaneously along lines of the microscope, to reveal an Invisible Within.

The Senses, which adapt man's Consciousness to environment by the functions of Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, Smell, have become, with evolutionary development, so increasingly sensitised in response to The Without as ever further to have set him in rapport with the world exterior. While, at the same time, so have they become sensitised in response to The Within, as ever further to have deepened and quickened his apprehension of an occulted Interior plane. Faculty has acquired thus, simultaneously with its increasing power of focusing the Outer and Objective, an increasing power so to invert its focus as to penetrate ever more deeply into the Inner and Subjective, alike of man's own constitution and that of environment.

These two contrary, but co-operative, modes of mentality are, respectively, Intellection and Intuition—Male and Female modes of mind.

XIII

Differentiation of the Zygote, or Mated Sex-cell

I have described, throughout, the right side of the human body as the male-side—that in which the Male-traits of Humanity are specialised in the individual; the left as the woman-side, that in which the Woman-traits of Humanity are centred.

But the modes of constitution, as of inheritance, are more complex, of course, than that one parent supplies the potential of one side, the other parent that of the other side.

As regards inheritance, the maternal ovum comprises, I believe, the potential of the whole body, with the exception of the brain, the spinal-cord and the spinal nerves. But because the mother is descended from parents of both sex, and possesses, therefore, both Male and Female elements, the ovum must contain (as must every other cell) both male and female factors. These, it is conceivable, are grouped, by contrary polarities, into two areas, or hemispheres; an upper and a lower. Of these the upper is Male in inherency. It comprises the potentials of shoulders and spinal column which are fulcra of action, and of lungs and heart which are the energising organs of Life. The lower hemisphere of the ovum is Female in inherency. It comprises the potentials of the pelvis, which is the cradle of Maternity, of the reproductive organs, which engender Life and the emotions, and of the digestive and assimilative organs, which engender vital processes.

So too, because the male parent is likewise descended from parents of opposite sex, his contribution to offspring must also contain both male and female factors. But while the mother supplies, in the ovum, the potential of the whole body—face and head, trunk, limbs and vital organs, the father contributes the potential of the brain, the spinal cord and the spinal nerves only, which adapt the organism, by way of form and Consciousness, to environment. The limbs, which adapt it, by way of Motion, to environment, may be regarded as differentiations primarily of the brain and nervous system.

The ovum is spheroidal; the sperm-cell rectilinear (following the rule that the line of Maleness is a straight one; that of Femaleness, a curve). And as in the spheroidal ovum, the factors of the opposite sexes, grouped into two areas, separate it into hemispheres of opposite sex-inherency, so in the rectilinear sperm-cell, we may surmise the factors of the two sexes to be grouped lengthwise, and to separate it thus into a male side and a female side. Such a sperm-cell penetrating the ovum, and developing laterally, further differentiates this into anterior, posterior and lateral areas. The two lateral developments of this potential brain and spinal cord and nerves eventually constitute the right and the left brain-hemispheres, and differentiate the body into right and left sides.

The left brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and nerves, is derived from the male side of the sperm-cell; while the right brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and spinal nerves, is derived from the female side (by inheritance) of the sperm cell.

Weismann describes the Germ-Plasm as being transmitted in the female line solely, from ovum of mother to that of daughter.

This supports the above view; namely, that the Germ-Plasm proper is inherent in the ovum, in which it exists in potential, or undifferentiated, form, and that it becomes differentiated (in both sexes) into a right and a left-reproductive gland of contrary sex-inherence, by differentiative power of the dual-sexed sperm-cell. The re-polarisation of the fertilised ovum, which is visible beneath the microscope, would seem to represent this differentiative process.

Since the microcosm is as the macrocosm, the Dual constitution must be repeated in every living cell of the body; the cell-plasma representing the vegetative system, the cell-nucleus representing the cerebro-nervous system. Possibly the nucleolus is the Supra- and Subconscious element.

XIV

Inorganic Matter is Dual and Hermaphrodite. Life breaks up this Neuter counterpoise, and progressively unlocks and segregates, and thus reveals and specialises the inherent attributes of Sex

Phenomena of Duality characterise not Living Matter only, but Inorganic Matter too. The elemental atom is never found manifesting singly, but always as two atoms coupled together, in the form of "the molecule"; these mated atoms being of opposite electrical potential.

And since Living Matter has evolved out of Inorganic Matter—what is to be inferred but that the duality of the living cell is the evolution, on the plane of Life, of the duality of the chemical molecule?

Further, that the duality of living forms in terms of sex-characteristics is the evolution, on the plane of Living Faculty, of the duality alike of the living cell and of the chemical molecule; the two sexes representing, respectively, the contrary inherences of all these dualities, specialised and ever further intensifying in the contrary trends of the opposite Sex-traits of Male and Female.

The elemental molecule is seen thus to be hybrid, or hermaphrodite, in constitution, precisely as the living cell and the living body are. While that both living cells and inorganic crystals reproduce, proves factors of Sex differentiated and functioning in them.

The inertia of Matter is due to the hermaphrodite state; its contrary Sex-impulses interlocking and nullifying one another. Life breaks up this neuter state of equipoise, by increasingly segregating the dual-sex-inherences and evolving each along its own intrinsic trend; thereby engendering between their dual factors fructifying interoperations which result in the motions of Growth and other vital processes.

Growth is a phenomenon of Reproduction. Living cells increase their substance by germination of their bi-sexual elements. Attaining maturity, a cell divides into two cells, each of which by way of similar processes develops into a mature cell.

And since for all Change, two (or more) contrary impulses are necessary, and since Reproduction is a function of Sex, what is to be inferred but that Evolution and Growth and all other phenomena of living cells result from oppositions, co-operations and correlations of the contrary impetus and processes of two orders of sex-factors present therein? By way alone of their bi-sexuality, are cells, both animal and vegetable, able to reproduce the cell-offspring required by living organisms for processes of growth, of function and repair.

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