ONE SIDE OF BODY IS MALE, THE OTHER SIDE IS FEMALE

I

On further applying the Principle of Duality, as operating in organisation and heredity, strangely interesting and significant developments appear.

Because, with the ever further evolution of Form and Faculty as organisms have risen higher in the scale of life, the bodies of living creatures are seen to have become further differentiated into two sides; a right and a left. Anatomically, these two sides appear identical in structure and in function, although contrary in incidence to one another. Each is incomplete and impotent without the other. Nevertheless, paralysis and other diseases show that each is, as it were, an entity totally distinct from the other. One side may be wholly helpless and insensitive while its fellow remains sound and efficient.

Complementary and supplementary each to the other, both are, in a sense, complete. Further and closer comparison of function shows, however, that although they co-operate in action, they are by no means identical in power or aptitude.

The right half of the body is, for both sexes, the active and executive half; quicker and stronger, and in all ways more efficient on the plane of physics.

The left half is, relatively, passive and inert, is responsive, mainly, to the initiative and requirements of the right half, by which its powers are overshadowed in every form of direct activity.

As with the two sides of the body, so it is with the two halves of the brain, which are at the same time the agencies of mentality and the centres for recording the sensations and for directing the movements of the two sides of the body. The brain-half which controls the right side is known as "the Leading half." It is the agent in concrete intellection, as in physical activity.

While, so far as biologists and psychologists have been able to discover, the other half of the brain is negative in function—a blank, as regards concrete intelligence and nervous or muscular initiative. In disease, it has sometimes been found to undertake, and to perform feebly and imperfectly, sundry of the duties of its active "Leading" partner. But inert and inadequate in muscular action, it is negative in intellection. It has been observed, however, that patients in whom this brain-half is diseased show signs of moral deterioration. Yet whatsoever its functions—and the fact that it does not atrophy nor degenerate in the marvellous structure and complexity which characterise brain-constitution shows that it functions duly—its operations are totally dissimilar to, and are, moreover, wholly overshadowed by those of its active, intelligent partner.

Here again, as in the two sides of the body, appear, surely, the factors of Dominance and Recessiveness—in other words of Maleness and Femaleness; of strength and activity upon material planes, and of inhibition upon these.

Developments which, being in full agreement with one another and with others, suggest that the two orders of Sex-characteristics (derived from parents of opposite sex) are centred, respectively, in the two sides of the body, and in the two brain-hemispheres allied, respectively, with these. One side of the body, with its allied brain-half, represents the paternal inherences of the individual; the other, the maternal. If so, the right side of the body, with its allied Leading, or Dominant, brain-half is, clearly, of male inherence. While the left side, with its allied Recessive, or Dormant, brain-half is of female inherence.

The inference is further supported by the fact that the stronger right side is rather larger and more masculine in form; while left-side limbs are in normal right-handed persons, more slender and shapely and delicate—in a word more womanly—than are those of the right.

As regards the face, from one aspect both sides are complete, from another aspect both are incomplete, without the other. And in configuration and expression, the two sides of the face differ appreciably; the left side being more psychical, emotional and subtle—in a word again more womanly.

In most persons, the hands and ears and eyes of one side differ from those of the other, both in form and in function. In some persons the differences are considerable. It happens occasionally, indeed, that the eye of one side resembles in colour the eyes of one parent, while the opposite eye bears the colour of those of the other parent.

Strange to say, there are, moreover, in the human male, organs concerned with the strictly female function of lactation.

Indication of primÆval human hermaphrodites formed one of Darwin's greatest puzzles, indeed. In his Descent of Man, the following passage occurs:

"It has been known that in the vertebrate Kingdom one sex bears rudiments of various accessory parts appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong to the other sex.... Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to have been hermaphrodite, or androgynous."

It escaped him as it has escaped later biologists that Man, the highest of the vertebrates, is still androgynous. And this inevitably so, since, being of bi-sexual parentage, the sex-characteristics of both parents must be present in him.

In The Evolution of Sex, Professors Geddes and Thomson state:

"Sometimes a fish is male on one side, female on the other, or male anteriorly and female posteriorly.... Among invertebrates the same has been occasionally observed, especially among butterflies, where striking differences in the colouring of the wings on the two sides have in some cases been found to correspond to an internal co-existence of ovary and testes.... The prettiest cases of superficial hermaphrodism occur among insects, especially among moths and butterflies, where it often happens that the wings on one side are those of the male, on the other, those of the female."

II

Despite the fact that Nature has evolved the complex human races from the single-celled microscopic amoeba ("Protoplasmic father of Man," as science has styled this), there are those who regard it as another of numerous blunders on the part of the Great Mother that the left side of the body is a more or less passive and powerless member. Accordingly, the doctrine of Ambidextry has arisen. With the result that its wiser exponents have abandoned it. Because it has been found that children trained on Ambidextrous lines develop neurotic symptoms. This occurs even in cases in which children naturally left-handed are taught to use the right hand, as is normal.

In a lecture given before The Child-Study Society in London, Mr. P. B. Ballard, London County-Council Inspector of Schools, stated that left-handed bowlers send down the ugliest balls, left-handed boxers deal the most unexpected blows—blows that hurt terribly. To be left-handed, it seemed, was to be not merely awkward, but to be wicked, moreover. Yet any attempt to interfere with a child's natural habit is liable to make him stammer. (The evil bent of left-handed persons has a special significance in view of my hypothesis of the dissimilar mental functions of the two brain-hemispheres. The term "sinister" expresses this bent. The inference is that in such transposition of the normal functions of the brain-halves, the tempering and humanising influence of the Woman-half is counteracted.)

Of a group of 545 left-handed children, 1 per cent. of pure left-handers stammered, against 4·3 per cent, of 399, in course of being taught to use the right hand, Mr. Ballard further stated. In another group of 207, the figures were 4·2 per cent, and 21·8 per cent. respectively. Six out of ten left-handed children who had been taught to use the right hand were practically cured of stammering after having been allowed to use the left hand exclusively for eighteen months. There are twice as many left-handed boys as left-handed girls; and stammering is twice as prevalent among boys.

All of which indicates normal differences in function of the two sides of the body—differences suggesting that, as I have surmised, each is the site and the agency of a principle totally unlike that of the other.

III

Upon referring to Biology—on the processes whereof every development, both physical and psychical, of living creatures rests—this curious dual constitution of the body, together with the problems of dual sex-transmission and inherency, become explicable.

And the solutions are at the same time so simple and inevitable as to be the strongest possible confirmation of my thesis.

As already stated, living organisms, offspring of two parents, derive half the source of their structure from one parent, half from the other.

All plants and living creatures evolve their organisation from a single microscopic cell, precisely as Life itself evolved primarily, and has developed out of the single-celled, microscopic amoeba. The microscopic cell which develops into a living creature is composed thus of two halves, or "gametes," to employ the scientific term. One half was contributed by the father: the other, by the mother. The two have united to form a whole cell. From such a cell (zygote), half male, half female, the body of every living organism has sprung.

Now, although these two half-cells unite to form a whole cell, exchange constituents, and appear to lose their identity each in the other, it is, in the face of the strange dual constitution of the body, difficult to doubt that each half actually retains its identity and sex-inherences, and develops along its own lines (albeit in close correlation with the other), throughout all the marvellous, intricate, and complex processes of embryological existence, during which the zygote is evolving into a living creature, capable of separate and individual life. And the inherences of these two halves are represented, at birth, in the respective sides of the body; each being, as it were, a complete and perfect entity, although inseparably knit in one flesh to its twin. And throughout all the further intricate and complex processes whereby the creature comes to maturity, lives, reproduces its species, and dies, each half preserves its individual inherence alike in constitution and in function. And yet in the mystical unity of their commingling duality, they are one flesh.

Each of the parental half-cells contained, marvellously, the potential moiety of a living personality. But either, alone, would have been but an incomplete and valueless thing, had it not become united with the complementary half-cell required to complete it structurally, and to engender and energise its potentialities. Nevertheless, throughout all the immature and the mature phases of life, from conception to birth, and from birth onward to death, the opposite sides of the body represent normally the opposite sex-inherences of their respective parents. They are, in humans, the Man and the Woman—two in one—that exist in every living man and woman. They represent contrary principles; they perform different functions; they engender and energise dissimilar processes. One is the centre of the Male characteristics, Dominant upon the material plane; the other, of the Female characteristics, Recessive thereon.

Normality and health are the mean and balance, in the individual, of the complementary and supplementary functions and processes of the opposite sex-inherences of his, or her, body. Precisely as in the social economy the complementary and supplementary rÔles of men and women counterpoise the aptitudes and determine the effectiveness of human life and action.

The left, Female-half of the body, with its allied half-brain,[1] is inhibitive, and engenders the evolution and the preservation, physical and mental, of The Type; sustaining health and vital power by way of the female attributes of rest and conservation.

The right, Male half, with its allied half-brain, is executive, and energises the development (Adaptation) of The Type in its relation to Environment, and, disbursing and applying the vital resources, generates and differentiates potential faculty in terms of living function.

IV

This hypothesis of the dual constitution and of dual functions of the two-sided body supplies an explanation, equally simple and inevitable, of the parental transmission of Sex. Natura simplex est, said Newton. And Du Prel, "Nature is much more simple than we have any conception of."

Because, as Biology shows, not only does each of the two parents contribute to offspring, but there being both a right and a left reproductive gland in members of both sexes, the contribution either parent supplies must have been derived from one or other of these glands in them. And if the two sides of the body are of different sex-inherence, it is only logical to conclude that the contribution the gland of one side makes will be of different sex-inherence from that of the other.

Since all forms of Energy have two modes, potential (or latent) and kinetic (or active), on the plane of physics, this must be true, of course, of Vital Energy.

Life-energy must be present in all living bodies in the forms, respectively, of latent Vital Energy and functioning Vital Energy—energy conserved and available for functioning, and energy expending itself in the living processes of mentality and action.

An individual is able to move his limbs by power of the potential motion stored, or latent, in the muscle-cells of his limbs. Just as a locomotive-engine is enabled to travel by power of the potential motion stored in the steam generated in its boiler. And as in the living organism, so in the engine, the mechanism and the processes that engender in it the potential motion of steam are wholly distinct from those which convert this potential motion into actual motion.

One is able to think, by power of the potential mentality stored, or latent, in his brain-cells. For not only the vital processes which sustain the life of the organism, as those too which enable it to function in terms of living personality and action, but brain-power also must exist in the dual forms, respectively, of potential Faculty and functioning Faculty. So too, Reproductive power. In all of these appear again the modes of Dominance and Recessiveness, of powers positive and manifesting, and of powers negative and latent. And since the female sex is characterised by traits of repose and conservation, and the male sex by traits of action, the dual modes of vital, muscular, cerebral and reproductive energy in potential, and of vital, muscular, cerebral and reproductive energy in course of generating function, range themselves inevitably on the two sides of the living equation as Sex-characteristics differentiating the male organisation from that of the female. Thus ranged, they characterise the two sides of the body as representing, respectively, a right, male side which is the central agency in function, and a left, female side, which is the reservoir of the potential of function.

If then the female mode of functioning is the Potential, or Recessive, a mode of latency, it is to be inferred that the male traits every female creature inherits from her father will, when incorporated in a body of female prepotence, pass into the potential, or Recessive, mode; and will thus become inhibited from developing as male-characteristics. Nevertheless, this male potential will be preserved in that reproductive gland which represents the paternal inherences in her, and will be transmitted, as her contribution to male offspring, in the sex-cells generated by this gland.

While the female inherences every male derives from his mother will, in the presence of the Dominant male-characteristics he derives from his father, retain their latent, or Recessive, mode; and will thus not emerge as female characteristics. The female inherences will be preserved, however, in that reproductive gland which represents the maternal inherences in him; and will be transmitted as his contribution to female offspring.

It will be seen thus that, as in hybrid plants, so in hybrid creatures of both sexes, cells of two sexes are generated: in the male, cells Dominant for maleness and cells Recessive for maleness—female that is; in the female, Recessive cells, prepotent for femaleness, and Dominant, or male, cells.

And of these, the Dominant male sex-cells contributed by the male parent, mating with the Dominant, or male, sex-cells contributed by the female parent, male offspring results. While the Recessive female sex-cells contributed by the female parent, mating with the Recessive, or female, sex-cells contributed by the male parent, female offspring results.

Furthermore, Dominance being paramount in development, it must be from the Dominant inherence imparted by residence in a male organisation to the potential, or Recessive, female Germ-Plasm that the latter derives the new developmental impulse it transmits to sex-cells. While Recessiveness being Life and Faculty in the potential mode, it must be from the Recessive inherence engendered in the Dominant male Germ-Plasm, by residence in a female organisation, that its Dominance, passing into latency, derives a new potential of further evolutionary impetus.

The differentiation of living creatures into two sexes, therefore, of bodies into two sides, of brains into two halves, and of Germ-Plasm into two reproductive glands, would seem to have had for object the ever further specialisation and segregation in the individual, for purposes alike of constitutional organisation and of the evolution of Faculty and Reproduction, of the two Orders of Contrasting Traits, which I have assumed to be Maleness and Femaleness, respectively.

From this view-point, the female Sex and Sex-traits are Recessive, or Potential, always, on the material plane, and manifest increasingly thereon only by way of ever more complex alliances with male-traits; which, being positive on the concrete plane, equip the female inherences for function thereon. Femaleness, or Recessiveness, on its side, however—being Life-Energy in the potential—is all the while engendering new potence for Dominance to transform into active, or functioning, power. While although negative, it is equally potent, on its side of the equation, to alter the values and manifestations of Dominance. Just as negative electricity inhibits the positive and destructive forces of positive electricity, although it does not, of itself, manifest directly.

The Dominant traits of Tallness and Strength, for example, are direct and positive factors in physical development. Dwarfness and Weakness are indirect and negative factors therein. Nevertheless, degrees of Dwarfness or of Weakness must proportionally reduce and modify the tallness of Tallness or the power of Strength.

But that Recessiveness is not a minus sign merely, as algebraically understood—but is an essential potence on another, and a psychical plane, is shown by the lesser height of woman rendering itself as a Grace; her lesser strength appearing in the new virtue of Gentleness.

That the female provides, for fertilisation, only a single sex-cell, from the reproductive gland of one or other side, while the male provides multiple and commingled cells from both sides, supports the view that sex-cells derived from one side are of opposite sex-inherence to those from the other side. Otherwise, why two reproductive glands?

The author of The Causation of Sex adduces evidence showing not only that the two glands are of opposite sex-inherence, but, moreover, that normally they function alternately; so that now a cell of one, now, of the other sex, is produced. It is likely, however, that function is seldom so mechanical, but that personal constitution or nurture modifies its operations.

That the male cells are multiple in number points to such a struggle of survival-fitness as ever characterises the more strenuous male destiny. Not, perhaps, the fittest as regards intrinsic superiority, but that most compatible with the requirements of the Queen-cell is selected for mate. Should the Queen-cell be of inferior standard, therefore, then (as happens in life) not the noblest of type, but that most adapted to environment secures racial survival.

So that here again, evolutionary racial advance may derive its impulse from the Female factor.

A singular phenomenon, recorded by the biologist, RÖrig, and one which materially supports my argument, is that disease of the ovaries of a female deer will cause male antlers to develop in her. Proving a male organism concealed, or held Recessive, in her, by power of her female sex-organs normally to inhibit the development of her inherited male-traits. A strange feature of this abnormal occurrence is that disease of one ovary only causes antlers to develop on one side only—and this on the side opposite to that of the diseased gland.

On the other hand, castration of male sheep of the Merino breed (only the males of which are horned) occasions hornlessness.

V

Male traits being paramount on the plane of concrete function, although they exist (normally) in Recessive form in the female, it is from the male inherence of her active right side and its allied brain-half that she derives her concrete powers alike of body and of brain.

It is obvious, therefore, that when abnormally stimulated by undue exercise, such male-traits may develop into abnormal dominance.

The left arm of woman is essentially the woman-member. In its half-passive action of supporting her infant for hours together, it is stronger for this maternal ministration than is the more active and doughty right arm of the male. Her left hand is more delicate of form, gentler and more soothing of motion than her right hand is. It is the hand she caresses with. While for direct, strong action—masculine action, that is—the paternal right half of her is dominant, as in the male. And although in our present-day stages of Evolution, the Recessive Woman-traits have emerged as definite characteristics, emancipating themselves from subjection by the Dominant male-traits, it must be remembered that their impulse and their powers are yet but rudimentary. Woman is still more male than she is female; her methods being more masculine still than they are womanly. And this in the degree of her cruder racial stock, or of the harder conditions (natural or artificial) of the environment in which she finds herself, demanding more of masculine proclivity in her—of physical activity and mental assertiveness—than of her intrinsic Woman-qualities of emotion and ministry.

Civilisation, foreshadowing evolutionary ideals, discountenances, the fighting female. Nevertheless, the cruder female fights still with her male right arm, and the more cultured female, with tongue and tactics.

The intrinsic Woman-qualities, whereof Christianity is the gospel, are yet in their infancy of development; are yet more ideals for which we are shaping and waiting than they are realised and abiding facts.

Even their own babes are not secure from the instinct of blows inherent in the male-muscles of their mothers' right arms, when these are restrained neither by a woman's tenderness nor by a man's chivalry. Girl-babies, save those of the rarer higher types, beat their mothers and nurses only rather less frequently and less fiercely than boy-babies do.

Later in their life-history, that new impulse to the evolution of the Woman-traits which characterises their development to womanhood, normally negatives and further tempers in girls the male instincts of fight and of sport. But many of our modern amazons, brought up like boys, are more male than are their brothers. The male fighting-instinct which moved man to invent a club (destructive) has become so tempered by the increasingly potent Woman-traits in him that, save when angry or at war, he is content to turn his club into a golf-stick, a cricket bat, or tennis racquet; his sword into a plough-share. Whereas, on the contrary, the Woman-traits which moved woman to invent the needle (constructive) are becoming so over-ridden by the male in her that modern woman, artificially masculinised, abhors the needle, and is almost as much dominated as the other sex is by the male instinct for a weapon in the hand.

The class, Vertebrates, would seem to represent an adaptation to environment typically Male; earlier than and contrary in trend to that of the Mammalia, whereof the impulse was obviously Female.

Increasing vertebration was characterised by such a progressive differentiation of Male from Female traits as progressively segregated these in opposite sides of the body; with spinal column and spinal cord for, respectively, physical and nervous central lines of demarcation. Thus the Male traits were enabled more and more to detach themselves at will from Female inhibition, and thereby increasingly to specialise and exercise those powers of force and fierceness and activity by way of which species became ever more individuated; aggressive, intelligent, efficient, in terms of Fitness for the struggle for survival.

Until that later evolution of female adaptation to Unfitness, in the sacrificial function of Lactation, inhibiting and tempering the earlier male trend, engendered the yet higher order of Mammalia.

(With that intuitive illumination inspiring speech, men and races lacking in virility are contemptuously described as being "invertebrate.")

According to this hypothesis, the paternal (and male) inherences of any mother may be said to be transmitted to the grandson in the direct male line of her heredity—an unbroken line of Maleness reaching back to its amoebic origin. While the maternal (and female) inherences of any father are transmitted, in the direct female line, to the grand-daughter—a similar line of continuity. The Woman-sex and traits of the grandmother remain thus for a generation dormant, or Recessive, in the father; "skipping a generation," as the phrase is. Then, in the third generation, they re-appear in the grand-daughter; by power of a maternal contribution in which the female inherence is prepotent. While the male-sex and traits of the grandfather remain dormant, or potential, in the mother; likewise "skipping a generation." Then they emerge in the grandson, by power of a male gamete evoking the inherent male in them.

VI

The attributes of the one sex invested thus in the other, although normally submerged, form nevertheless a valuable endowment; supplying supplementary and complementary factors to counterpoise, to energise, and fructify the powers proper to the sex of the individual.

Man bears throughout life the Woman-potential his mother transmitted to him. But it is not his to realise. He bears it in trust for his daughters. He transmits it to his daughters, and in them this potential, recovering its woman-impulse, evolves to a further degree of woman-power. The like with mothers and sons.

All of which is supported by the Mendelian doctrine that the mother transmits "Femaleness" as a Dominant factor to her daughters and as a Recessive factor to her sons.

But the method whereby this is achieved has remained a mystery.

Professor Punnett says with regard to the phenomenon:

"The mother transmits to her daughter the dominant faculty of femaleness, but to balance this, as it were, she transmits to her sons another quality which her daughters do not receive ... among human families, in respect to particular qualities, the sons tend to resemble their mothers more than their daughters do."

A striking illustration of such transmission by mother to son of a paternally-derived abnormal inherence which she herself does not develop, is found in so-called "bleeders"; persons who suffer from the disease, hÆmophilia. The daughters of a "bleeder" father show no symptom at all of the affliction, but they, nevertheless, pass on to their sons this male heritage of the grandfather.

There are numerous other examples of traits and diseases thus "skipping a generation"—in other words, of lying dormant, or potential, merely; overshadowed in the constitution and psychology of the sex to which they do not rightly belong, but developing in a succeeding generation in offspring of that sex whereof they are a natural trait, or (so to speak) a natural defect.

Since the woman-half she contributes to their hybrid constitution engenders the potential of their living processes, the mother may be regarded as still mothering her children throughout development and maturity, and to the end of their natural term. Accounting for that mystical sympathy between mother and child which intuitively informs her of fatalities occurring to absent sons and daughters—but to sons pre-eminently. Marvellously, they remain one living flesh so long as life persists.

During the War, mothers at a distance have known by an intuitive flash, and have told of the death of sons cut down in battle. One mother described the sensation she experienced as being precisely as though one side of her body had been suddenly torn away. So too, mothers whose infants have died during childbirth or shortly after, describe as persisting for months subsequently a sense as though part of them were dead.

The father too must function in the hybrid living constitution. With the immense difference, however, that his part therein is a factor of the development of traits, not of the mystical functioning of Life. A notable feature of this paternal heritage is that in women at middle-age (when the wane of reproductive power releases vital potential from maternal investments) not only may masculine physical traits emerge, but there may develop in them notable brain-capacities inherited from the father. Capacities inherent in them previously, but long inhibited in action by the normal female brain-Recessiveness.

VII

Every higher evolutionary differentiation results inevitably not only in progressive mutations in the traits of species, but, as well, in variations of the reproductive processes of such. When defects, physical or mental, are not reproduced in later generations true to Mendelian law, however, this is not abnormal, but is beautifully normal. Normality requires that defect—which is a deviation from The Normal—shall not be transmitted in any ratio whatsoever, but shall be corrected in a succeeding generation.

Moreover, when we realise the number and the complexities of human traits, all struggling to keep The Law, it is only to be expected that any single characteristic owing to its sex-inherence, may pass into the potential or Recessive, mode, and may thus vanish for a generation. Further, by the law of compensation, any trait or determinant, although itself Dominant, may be dwarfed and submerged by some other Dominant trait more assertive than itself.

Suppose a father normally larger and stronger than the normally shorter and weaker mother: Stature and strength being both Dominant and masculine traits, the traits of such a father, dominating the development of his sons, should so over-ride the traits of lesser strength and stature of the mother (in whom strength and stature are normally Recessive) that his sons will be tall and broad and strong, and mentally virile. On the other hand, the mother's traits, prepotent in the development of daughters, will inhibit in these and diminish the strength and stature of their paternal inherences. Thus, the woman of pure Recessive (the essential woman) type is smaller, more delicately organised, and weaker than the male.

By such means, the normal of the relative strength, stature, and mental qualifications of the sexes is preserved; the specialised characteristics of both ever further diverging in trend, while at the same time intensifying their intrinsic attributes.

Suppose, however, a mother who deviates from the normal in having developed along masculine lines, and who is, accordingly, tall or strong or mentally virile: Far from supplementing, in her sons, the father's traits of strength and stature, her sons will be more or less emasculate in mind or body, or in both. Strength and stature and virile mentality not being normal to her, these can only have emerged in her and can only have been exercised by her at cost of the masculine potential she bore in trust for male offspring. A woman who wins golf or hockey-matches may be said therefore to energise her muscles with the potential manhood of possible sons. With their potential existence indeed, since over-strenuous pursuits may sterilise women absolutely as regards male offspring.

Thus it is that muscular and otherwise masculine women produce weakling males. (Giant women—female-Dominants—are incapable of reproduction.) Tall mothers may produce tall sons, by transmitting to them the single trait of tallness of the maternal grandfather. But since tallness in woman is development along masculine lines, and detracts from her maternal power, the tall son in such case is likely to be defective in other manly traits. Men are of greater height than women, mainly in consequence of greater length of leg. The power expended in the male in length of limb is absorbed in the female into complex pelvic developments, wherein it is stored as Reproductive potential.

The power thus stored in latency reveals itself in the amazing evolution, as regards capacity and muscular equipment, by way of which the maternal uterus so develops during pregnancy as to enable it to cradle an infant of 9 or 10 lbs. weight, and to deliver this by output of immense energy—a marvel of biological function and mechanism.

Since the male trait of Tallness may be transmitted by woman from her father to her son, without manifesting in herself, it is obviously waste of power for her to develop a characteristic she needs neither for personal nor for hereditary purposes. Whereas, by further evolving her own woman-traits of suppleness and grace, she contributes new factors to those of the male. And so with all the other sex-characteristics.

Mr. Horace G. Regnart, M.A., the well-known breeder of pedigree stock, states that a bull of marked masculine characteristics sires daughters of marked feminine characteristics. While the feminine cow bears sons of strongly masculine type. On the other hand, the daughters of a "steery" bull (a bull of de-sexed type) are themselves defective in female characteristics, and bear sons defective in male characteristics.

VIII

Clearly and fully defined, accordingly, as Sex-characteristics are in proportion as the individual is of high and normal organisation, obtrusions in the one sex of the traits of the other are as much stigmata of abnormality as are cleft-palate, webbed feet, or other deviations from the normal. Because they are reversions to lower types of organisation in which sex was less highly differentiated than is the normal of to-day.

Although, with progressive evolution, the Sex-traits are spun ever finer and finer, and are ever more subtly and inextricably interwoven with those of the other, normally the threads run true and distinct as do the threads of warp and woof in textile fabric.

The ever finer spinning of the threads secures an ever closer, subtler interweaving. Whereby the fabric of human organisation, of character and Faculty, becomes ever firmer yet more supple, ever stronger yet more delicate, ever more intense and rich of colour, but nevertheless more beautifully harmonised and subtilised by half-tones and complex gradations.

This is the reason why the strongest and most virile men are the most humane; the sternest are most tender; the greatest are most subtle. So inextricably interwoven with their virile characteristics are the finer spun Woman-potencies, as strangely and exquisitely to temper and sensitise their Manhood's powers.

And it is why the tenderest, most womanly women are the noblest; the gentlest are the most enduring; the wisest are the sweetest.

But no more than Black can be White, Acid, Alkaline, or the Straight line a Circle, can Repose be Action, Sternness be Sweetness, Firmness be Softness, Fierceness be Gentleness; Assertiveness, Selflessness; Boldness, Modesty. Nevertheless, in the hybrid unfoldment of Contrasting traits, Softness tempering Fierceness transforms it to Strength; Sweetness tempering Sternness melts it to Mercy; Assertiveness reinforcing Selflessness nerves it to Devotion; Firmness preserves Softness from lapsing to Weakness; Altruism, inspiring Chivalry, transfigures it to Heroism. But that Fierceness and Strength, Sweetness and Selflessness, have only intensified as, with further evolution, they have extended further into Life and Consciousness, is shown when they tear themselves asunder from their counterpoising attributes. Fierceness is seen then to be more fierce in complex man—because fierce in so many more and deeper issues of Life and Consciousness—than is the fierceness of the gorilla, which manifests largely in muscular savagery; champing of jaws, and beating on its breast as on a drum.

So too, the emotion of complex woman is more deeply rooted in her, and is more intense, than is the instinctive emotionalism of the savage woman which expresses itself mainly in reflex movements and hysterical outcries.

* * * * *

Thus down the ages, man, by way of Fatherhood, has endowed woman ever further with his developing traits of strength and intelligence. Woman, by way of Motherhood, has endowed man with an ever fuller heritage of her attributes of selflessness and intuition.

So these poor souls—the Man and the Woman in all men and women—have climbed the steep ascent together, hand in hand, toward the Light. Without the other, neither could have come. So tragically drear and solitary would have been the pilgrimage, save for the spiritual converse of that mystical comrade.

Only by way of this psychical comradeship, which solaces the one sex by the inspiration of the other, do men and women win through the terrestrial travail of the human destiny.

The mystical Man (who is her father in her) when woman would falter and fail in the fight, whispers, "Courage, dear Girl, go on!"

The mystical Woman (who is his mother in him) goes with her son into the murk and struggle of temptation, holding her lamp of The Good and The True and The Beautiful before his blinding eyes.

[1] Owing to an interchange of nervous strands, the right half of the brain controls the left half of the body; and the converse. Structural details which need not be considered here, but which have clearly for purpose the closer and more complex association and co-ordination of the Contrasting Traits of the two sides of the body.