THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES

I

Of what order is this Woman-half of Mind which Feminism seeks to extinguish?

* * * * *

The cerebral processes appreciable upon the Outer plane, and calculable by Science, represent no more than a tithe of brain-activities. They are but a single highly-specialised focus of brain-functioning.

Behind concrete Volition, Intellection, and Action, are the silent, ceaseless, inner and incalculable workings of innumerable brain-cells concerned with the mysterious constitution and metabolism of Life, and its strange, potent relation and correlation with Mind and with environment; concerned with character and attribute and impulse; with ancestral vestiges and personal experience; with memories and instincts; with an infinitude of occulted and imperishable records of previous terrestrial existences, perhaps; concerned, in a word, with all the secret springs and complex potences of Individuality; which differentiates every thought, emotion and action of any human person from those of every other.

And in these recondite mysteries fructifying in a hundred million bi-sexual brain-cells, it may be that the subtle counter and inter-operations of the Man and Woman-traits find their highest activities, and make for their supremest issues.

Every man and woman is to every other a Sealed Book, whereof no more than a few pages have been glimpsed—even by those nearest and dearest. We are Sealed Books to ourselves, indeed, because we do not know the language we are written in. For of all the muted mysteries spinning ceaselessly within the silent-functioning cells of twin brain-hemispheres, Science affords us but the scantest and most sketchy information. That the grey matter coating the brain-convolutions is the site of mentality; that the higher the intelligence, the deeper and more intricate these convolutions are; that disease of a certain area destroys the power of speech; while disease of some other occasions paralysis of this or that group of muscles, loss of sensation in this or that tract of skin. Baldly it states that a portion of a certain convolution controls a certain movement of a hand. But the thousand and one emotions and incentives prompting such movement, and differentiating the resulting action across the extensive range between the noblest benefaction and the blackest murder, baffle every scientific method.

The processes of Mind and Impulse occur on planes we have no means of penetrating, possess no appliances whereby to estimate the ethereal undulations thereof.

What are we? Who are we? Whence are we? Whither do we go?

All is locked within the occulted silence of our hundred million brain-cells; each of which holds and keeps its own intrinsic secret; each the mysterious record, it may be, of one of those countless experiences, forms and phases, ancestral or individual, whereof every living person is the last resultant. But the Twin-hemispheres, face to face within the skull, like opposite pages of a book, are key to one another; one page written in the mystical language of The Past and Future, the other in the concrete language of The Present.

II

Is that which I surmise to be the Woman—and emotional half of brain, the site of the mysterious province known as The Subconsciousness, into the strange powers and phenomena whereof scientists are now beginning to inquire?

Is it the seat of that which Myers designated "The Subliminal Consciousness," but which might well be called the Supra-Consciousness, because, in the regions of its higher functioning, it cognises things beyond power of Concrete Consciousness to apprehend; intuitions, premonitions, apparitions, telepathic messages?

Is it medium of those inherences and that sub-intelligent emotionalism known as Instinct; which may be regarded as the implanted religion of rudimentary organisms, leading them upward in blind subconscious obedience, at sacrifice of their self-interests and disposition?

Respecting the regeneration of the crystalline lens of the eye of a Triton, Bergson says:

"Whether we will or no, we must appeal to some inner directing principle in order to account for this convergence of effects."

May it not be that this brain-half—seemingly functionless, albeit as marvellously constructed and constituted as its fellow-half—is, in its merely organic departments, the agency of such an "inner principle," engendering the vital potentials of Life and Evolution, of health, of nervous recuperation and of biological repair? While in its departments of Mind, it functions as instinct, as intuition, as inspiration, aspiration; serves as the subtly receptive medium by way of which The Divine Influx wells in human attribute; whereby Divine Revelation is communicated to the concrete brain-half, for interpretation in speech and in writing. Bergson says also: "The consciousness of a living being may be defined as an arithmetical difference between potential and realised activity. It measures the interval between representation and action." (Duality is indicated.)

The trait essentially distinguishing the human from the brute-mind, is Intelligent Purpose. And Purpose is the product of Impulse (or Instinct) and Reason, (or Concrete Intelligence). (Duality again.) Impulse is an emotion and is feminine. Reason is masculine. Intelligent Purpose may well be, therefore, a resultant of the co-operation of the feminine half of the brain, which supplies Impulse, with the masculine half, which supplies Reason.

Instinct, Professor James, the American psychologist, has pointed out, exists independently of any recognition of its purpose. While Reason exists apart from instinct—apart therefore from the emotional impulse which gives it the personal motive-power to become purpose. Thus, either mode of brain without the other to supplement it would be incapable of function.

Self-consciousness requires two departments of Consciousness—each of which is aware of the other. So that a man may judge and restrain impulses in himself that are contrary to reason and expedience, or, on the other hand, may choose to sacrifice both reason and self-interest to emotional impulse, noble and uplifting, or ignoble and debasing.

Describing Intellect as characterised by a natural inability to comprehend Life, Professor Bergson further says: "Instinct, on the contrary, is moulded on the very form of Life.... If the consciousness that slumbers in it should awake, if it were wound up into knowledge instead of being wound off into action, if we could ask and it could reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of Life."

Again Duality of mental processes is inferred. As too in the following passage:

"Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could extend its object and also reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations—just as intelligence, developed and disciplined, guides us into Matter.... Intelligence, by means of science ... brings us, and moreover only claims to bring us, a translation of Life in terms of inertia.... But it is to the very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us—by Intuition I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely."

III

The phenomena of Hypnotism seem to set the Duality of cerebral processes beyond dispute.

Dr. George H. Savage, Consulting Physician and late Lecturer on Mental diseases at Guy's Hospital, in his Harveian Oration, October 1909, testified as follows to the strangeness and authenticity of hypnotic evidences:

"Wishing to follow our great master in not accepting anything without personal investigation, I took advantage of the opportunity offered by Dr. Wright, to test some of the points of most importance to which I have referred.

"A gentleman, an engineer, who had been relieved by treatment by Dr. Wright, was willing to allow him to demonstrate the various stages of hypnotism and their effects.... He was asked to sit down and talk quietly about his relationship to hypnotism. Then he was told to go to sleep. A few passes being made over his head, he slowly closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was sleeping placidly. By the gentle stroking of his left arm this was rendered inflexible. The pulse was in no way affected; pupils were equal, but rather larger than before he slept, and were sluggish. He was slowly aroused (it being well always to recall the subject slowly). After a talk on general matters he stated that he had no sense of fatigue in the arm, nor any recollection of anything said and done during the period of hypnosis.

"He was again, in a similar way, sent to sleep. It was then suggested that at the end of seven minutes he should lose all power and sensibility in his right side. He was roused, given a cigarette, which he smoked while he talked, having no knowledge of the suggestion which had been made. About five minutes after he had been roused, his right arm fell useless by his side, he passing at the same time into a partial stage of hypnosis. This is common when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out. The whole of the right side, including the face, was insensitive; the pupils were smaller and inactive. He was again slowly aroused, and resumed smoking, having no feeling of oppression, or recollection of anything which had been said or done. He was later again hypnotised, and in that condition he was asked what had been done formerly. After some hesitation, he, in part, recalled the facts.

"It is interesting to note that though constantly the acts performed during hypnosis are not recalled when awake, they are fully remembered on a second hypnosis. We tested his emotional side by getting him to recall scenes in a comic opera, at which he heartily laughed but had no knowledge of on waking. While unconscious, it was suggested that when he woke he should remark upon a strong odour of violets. He was awakened and offered a cigarette; but, looking about the room, he asked whence the strong smell of violets came.

"I inquired as to the revival of long-past impressions, and it seems that occurrences which took place before his present memory existed, had been revived and verified. But still more interesting was his experience in reference to a mathematical formula which he had forgotten. Being hypnotised, he dictated it, and though when once more awake he did not remember it, when shown what he had just dictated he recognised it as the lost formula. This, of course, is in a way parallel to the solution of difficult problems during sleep."

Be it observed that when at the end of seven minutes (as had been "suggested" to him should happen) the subject lost all power and sensibility in his right side and "his right arm fell useless by his side," he passed "at the same time into a partial state of hypnosis. This is common," Dr. Savage adds, "when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out."

Here is strong corroboration of my argument that the right side of the body, with its allied half-brain, is the agent of Material Consciousness, of muscular action and of physical sensation, and that it operates normally in fencing in the higher faculties of Mind from the outer plane of concrete happenings, as also of interpreting them upon this plane.

Hypnosis is induced by devices occasioning muscular exhaustion, and thus temporarily paralysing "voluntary muscles"—muscles, that is, which are under conscious control. It is induced as well (as in the case cited) by stroking, and thus putting to sleep the sensory nerves—nerves which define the patient's consciousness of his material personality. It would seem that by such inhibition, or paralysis, of the perceptions of the outer consciousness, faculties of Subconsciousness—even of Supra-consciousness—are exposed, so that Mind itself may be dealt with direct.

Every form of insensibility is closely allied with muscular relaxation or paralysis.

IV

Examples of the operation of the Supra-conscious faculties upon the concrete plane are supplied by the marvellous feats of "lightning calculators."

The most intricate mathematical problems—calculations that would call for lengthy and complicated intellectual processes on the part of expert mathematicians to work out by ordinary methods—are solved instantaneously by the genius of such natural "calculators." You cannot puzzle them; you cannot baffle them. Scarcely have you stated your problem than they have calmly presented you with the solution. As Maeterlinck records in his interesting book, The Unknown Guest, this genius for figures developed in Colbourn and Safford at the age of six, in Mangiamele at ten, in Gauss and Whateley at three. All that and more than expert mathematicians laboriously acquire by decades of study and practice, these boy-prodigies achieved by way of native faculty. Such have not the slightest notion how they arrive at their results. These are obtained automatically—are products of unconscious cerebration.

Maeterlinck observes of this, that the resultant "appears to rise, infallible and ready-done, from a sort of eternal and cosmic reservoir wherein the answer to every question lies dormant."

What is this "eternal and cosmic reservoir" if it be not Mind, or Supra-consciousness, as distinguished from conscious intellection—a native intuitive, but undifferentiate, or potential, consciousness which holds the answer, "infallible and ready-done," to every question.

Truth Is. There is but one solution—the true one—of a mathematical or any other problem of exact science.

A significant fact is that such prodigy boys generally lose their mysterious faculty "at the moment when the possessor begins to go to school." So soon, that is, as he develops the power of conscious brain-processes—the power to work out his problems by concrete methods—his native supra-conscious gift of solving them spontaneously fails.

Intuition, the woman-mode of arriving at conclusions, lightning quick and true without reason or reflection, is a kindred potency of Mind. "When a man," says a French writer, "has laboriously climbed a staircase, he is sure to find a woman at the top—although she will be unable to say how she came there!"

He did not add the further truth, that—as with the prodigy boys—the more you educate her to come at her conclusions by processes of intellection, the more you rob her of her native woman-gift of divination.

With the rising level of Faculty engendered by progressive evolution, woman's powers of intellection have developed too.

While her own mental attributes are themselves of a very high order, and give to her mentality an inductive subtlety and illumination lacking in that of the male. And this high quality of brain it is that is now being extinguished in her by straining her to masculine standards.

Progress awaits, indeed, the new and quickening impulse Life and Faculty should derive from the Woman-mind fostered along its own inherent lines—to supplement the mind of man. For as Bergson says, "it is to the very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us."

And Intuition is the woman-mode of Mind.

* * * * *

The women intellectuals who have done great work have been women who inherited talents so far above the average, as spontaneously to have reached high mental levels, without need to have sacrificed those womanly traits which gave the noblest values to such work.

The woman of average brain, however, attains the intellectual standards of the man of average brain only at cost of her health, of her emotions, or of her morale.

V

Herbert Spencer said profoundly, "Mind is as deep as the viscera." Indicating it as being vital and intrinsic, at one with the occulted sources of Life.

Mind is of an order of mentality wholly different from that of Intelligence or Intellect. Mind is of the nature of Emotion. It is personal, is sympathy, is divination. It is the cerebration of the Soul.

The Soul, or essential Individuality, must abide amid infinitely delicate and delicately infinite brain-cells attuned to those spiritual vibrations whereof Mind is the reflex. And if Mind is Emotion, the Woman brain-half, which is the department of human emotion, must be the mainspring of the human mind.

Great intellect, pure and simple, may exist in man or woman without or with only a fractional leaven of Mind. This is seen in the abstractions of scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, astronomers, financiers, and others. Such brains are special organs of a high order of Intellection, clear, calculating and precise of observation and reflection; rational, deductive; admirable in their unswerving rectitude, pitiless in their impregnable emotionlessness; rejecting all but incontestable evidences, scrupulously aggregating and faithfully interpreting their dry bones of numbers and data and vestiges—skeletons of Life long since extinct, or scaffoldings of Life that lives and moves and laughs and weeps, and bears no more semblance to their bloodless tabulations of its modes and processes than warm, creative Mother-Earth resembles the geological strata they describe in her; or than a beautiful flower-garden blooms in botanical treatises; or than living men and women are pourtrayed in text-books of Anatomy and Physiology.

Many men of Science—and all the great ones—have been men of Mind as well as of Intellect. But the intellectual processes of Abstract Science are no more operations of Mind than the paths by which we climb to sun-illumined peaks are the Light upon those peaks. Mind is Spiritual Illumination—a glimmering of The Infinite, reflected in the highest and most subtle order of the brain-cells. Rays from it are deflected toward the concrete, to function as Intellection. But these rays enter the brain at a different angle from that of Mind-rays.

Like woman its medium, Mind is inspirational, wayward and elusive. It comes we know not whence. It goes we know not whither. Receptive, intuitive, creative, colourful, it may be unwitting of Astronomy, yet it roams amid the stars. Ignorant of Geology, in it Immortal, the dry-bones of The Past become immortal—arise eternally in everlasting re-creation. Its Biology is in the lives and loves, the hopes and fears, the throes and tears of human souls and stories. It inspires the poet, priest, historian, romancist, artist; the seer and statesman; the philosopher and wondering child. It exalts the humble and meek. It may be lacking in the cleverest and most learned of men. It is found in the most ignorant and simple women; in whom it is dumb, however, failing the intellectual talent of expression.

VI

The Woman brain-half being medium, in its higher region, of that Supra-conscious emotionalism which engenders Mind, and in its lower region, of that Subconscious emotionalism which engenders vital impulse in the body, woman's range of mentality is wider than is that of man; extending both higher and lower in its opposite reaches.

But because her Intelligent Consciousness is not inherent in her own brain-half, but is supplied by her borrowed masculine brain-half, her intelligence is more superficial, is weaker and less deep and strong of grip than is his. And when the gap between her upper and her lower registers is not duly bridged and stabilised by an efficient middle-register of male-intelligence, she tends toward two extremes of mentality, both of which are emotional. Thus she lives on the plane of her highest emotional impulses. Or she lives on the plane of her senses. Some women act and re-act perpetually between these two extremes.

In her highest Supra-reaches, she is athrill with Supra-faculties. In her lowest Sub-register, she is instinct and palpitant with the colour, the magnetic vibrations and the blind forces of Matter, which her vital processes are evolving into Life.

Extremes which are shown, at the one end, in the reasonless animal emotionalism of hysteria, with its abandon of control, its inco-ordinated muscular movements, its senseless weepings, cries and laughter; at the other end, in catalepsy, in which she exists detached from earth and its material needs and consciousness, subsisting, it may be for weeks together, without food or drink, withdrawn into the Inner, and potential, zones of Life and Mind. So that, no longer subject to limitations of Matter, she perceives without aid of the senses, apprehends without aid of intelligence, discerns without help of the eyes, hears without instrumentality of ears. And Time and Space no longer circumscribing her essential faculties, she visions happenings at the Antipodes, overhears whispers across a Continent, recalls The Past, foretells The Future.

It is because of the potence of the Subconscious medium in her, instinct with the magnetic forces of Evolving Matter, that, in her intelligence, she shows as more materialistic than man is, although warmer and more quickened in her feelings.

Living personalities and issues mean to her more than intellectual abstractions do. She is more materialistic because she cares more for the things that matter! The puddings which in her children's young bodies will be transmuted into living flesh and function, are to her of more significance than the Isosceles Triangle is.

(All that is true of the Woman brain-half must be true of the Woman brain-half in man. In him, however, his own hemisphere dominates the bent and faculty of its female counterpart.)

It is in the emotional impressionability of the Subconsciousness that habit, good and bad, is formed. Hence woman's native susceptibility to her environment—a susceptibility which renders indispensable due protection of her mind and nature during years when habits of thought and of conduct are shaping in her. Normal man, whose emotionalism is (like woman's intelligence) a borrowed faculty, differs essentially from her in this. His intelligence is inherent and more stably rooted. He is far less mimetic, far less a creature of circumstance. His firmer will and stronger intellect enable him to rise superior to environmental conditions, to shake himself free alike of habit and of circumstance; his pioneering spirit disposing him to new departures.

VII

Dual Personality, Catalepsy, Epilepsy, Shock, Insanity, Chorea are explicable as effects of abnormal dissociations or inherent discrepant relations between the two brain-hemispheres, which represent, respectively, Conscious (or objective) Intelligence, and Subconsciousness (which is subjective).

Such discrepancy occasioning confusion between the two planes of mentality, perception becomes so blurred that, as in insanity, subjective impressions are perceived as objective fact. And some idea or spectre of his own mind becoming thus objective, and being seen out of all perspective with the facts and conditions of everyday life, the patient may be so haunted and dominated thereby that not only his mentality, but his actions too may take distorted shape.

While the Conscious Brain-half is a lens that focuses the Concrete, the Subconscious Brain-half is a highly-sensitised mirror (or retina) that reflects and retains, in terms of potential Memory, all impressions and experiences. It becomes charged thus with a medley of strange and incongruous imprints, which, so long as the lens keeps these submerged and subconscious—because unfocused on the plane of consciousness—do not obtrude upon mentality. Flaws or failures in the lens of reason allowing certain imprints to emerge, these become fixed ideas and obsessions.

It is by way of the Subconsciousness, that the hypnotist impresses "suggestion."

Clairvoyants and other "mediums" employ crystal-gazing and other devices in order to fatigue, and thus to paralyse or inhibit the visual function on the outer plane of Sight. By such means, the Subconscious visual faculty comes into operation, and sets them en rapport with their client's subconscious mentality. This becoming objective to them, those endowed with the gift of "Second-Sight" (a faculty not to be denied) are able to visualise in it misty impressions of the subjects' character, thoughts and circumstances. Those rare clairvoyants who are able to establish rapport with their client's Supra-consciousness may catch glimmerings of future events, even. Because Supra-conscious Mind, being Supra-Natural, is not bounded by the limitations of The Natural, in respect of Time and Space. In it, that which Was still Is, and that which Is-to-be already Has Been.

"Spiritists" who see or hear phenomena they attribute to "spirits" are (when such are genuine) for the most part visualising or overhearing phenomena of their own (or of some other's) Subconsciousness, which, owing to errors of refraction in the lens of Consciousness, have become objective to them.

It may well be by way of magnetic vibrations communicated to Ether by the Supra or the Subconsciousness, that apparitions and telepathic impressions are transmitted from the brain of one person to that of another. So too, apparitions seen of persons lately dead, and so-called spiritist "communications" with these, may be (when genuine) phenomena of such etheric vibrations communicated to the Supra or the Subconsciousness of a living person, and apprehended by him in the objective forms of "ghosts" or "voices."

Kindred vital and powerful electric vibrations emanating, at the moment of death, from the Subconsciousness of victims murdered, may so charge the etheric element of houses and localities as to be communicable, for long periods afterwards, to the Subconscious mentality of "sensitives," which serves thus as "wireless receiver." Such sensitives derive the impression that the scene of the tragedy is haunted by the actual "spirit" of the murdered.

It is as incredible, of course, that an immortal soul should be chained to the scene of the violent death of a mortal body as it is incredible that a "spirit" should be at the call of a "medium," who—perhaps, for a fee—should be able, at will, to summon it back to the plane of concrete conditions, in order that it might talk (for the most part) irrelevant nonsense.

On the other hand it is to be believed that, for a brief period after death, a spiritual entity may remain sufficiently in touch with the material plane as to be able, by way of those Etheric undulations continuous through all the planes of Being, to manifest its existence to one in close sympathy with it.

VIII

In an article by me, "Is Man an Electrical Organism?" which appeared in The Nineteenth Century, July, 1914, I showed—on the evidence of careful and delicate experiments by an electrical expert—that the two sides of the body (and presumably of the brain) are of different electrical potential. The active, right side is positively electrified, while the passive, left side is negatively electrified.

Mental Telepathy and TelÆsthesia prove, surely, that brain and nerve-currents are electrical—one brain-hemisphere operating as transmitter, the other as receiver. Since Nature employs one Law only to suspend the mighty solar systems of the Universe and to bring an apple to the ground, is it credible that she should employ two laws for "Wireless" and for Human telegraphy, respectively?

The Hibernation both of animal and vegetative organisms shows two poles of vital function; Life and Consciousness passing into the Recessive, or potential, mode during such winter-sleep. Plants sleep by night.

Is Sleep a recession merely from the state of Consciousness to the potential states of Sub- and Supra-consciousness? And do these two states alternate normally in the opposite halves of the brain, concurrently with the alternation of Day and Night? Night-blindness suggests such an alternation in the dual factors of Vision—which comprises the intrinsic faculty of Vision and the concrete function of visualising the external. Every concrete function normally wanes with the waning of Day.

Hence increasing drowsiness, passing into Sleep.

Morning and evening mentality differ greatly. Intellect, reason and physical activity are paramount during the day. Emotion and imagination intensify with the approach of night.

Is this an alternation in function of the Male and Female brain-hemispheres, coincident with the alternation of the dual luminaries of our earth—the positive, unchanging Dominant Sun; the changeful Moon, with her Recessive phases and her mystical influences upon Life and Mind? The ante-natal life of the embryo is set in terms of lunar months. The word "lunatic" expresses the effects of lunar phases on persons of unstable mentality.

Whence do we derive our daily influx of Life? Though we have sunk to rest with dissolution in our bones, we awake re-charged with powers of living—a phenomenon for which Science has no explanation.

Life does not originate in vital processes; vital processes originate in Life. Do we, in sleep, when processes have exhausted our daily influx of Life-power, recruit this again from a psychical source? Are living processes the wick of a lamp which is filled with the Spirit of Life at each recurring dawn, spent by the day's endeavour, and re-filled again with the following dawn?

Failure of sleep kills more swiftly than starvation. And drug-insensibility will not preserve life unless natural sleep supervene.

If nervous energy is a complex form of electrical energy, then the brain in which this is stored is an electrical dynamo. Is this dynamo re-charged during sleep from some Occult Power-station?

Since, in every equation of Science, an unknown factor reveals itself, why not candidly confess this to be a Spiritual factor?

Spirit is no more a hypothetical medium than Ether is. And Science has been forced to assume the existence of Ether, as a basis for its calculations. Ether and Spirit are conceivably the same medium manifesting on different planes—the one of Physics, the other of Mind.

IX

According to Professor ClarapÈde:

"The intellect appears only as a makeshift, an instrument which betrays that the organism is not adapted to its environment, a mode of expression which reveals a state of impotence."

A saying which supports three clauses of my hypothesis: First, that the brain, with its tributary spinal-nervous system, is an instrument of Consciousness wholly differentiated from, and supplementary to the organism of Life. Secondly, that it is an instrument designed for the adaptation of the organism to environment (the rÔle I have assigned, throughout, to the male). Thirdly, that the organism of Life is not itself adapted to its environment, and that, accordingly, Adaptation to Environment cannot be regarded as the impulse of Evolutionary development, since the living organism has so far failed to adapt itself to environment that it requires a highly specialised instrument to serve as medium between itself and its surroundings.

That Intellect—being an instrument by way of which Life is adapted to environment, as also, on the other hand, by way of which environment is adapted to Life—is a makeshift that "reveals a state of impotence" is not to be admitted, however, in view of the fact that it is an instrument which preserves Life from developing along the lines of its environment; an adaptation which would necessarily involve lapse from typal ideals.

Intelligence taught man, in place of so adapting to environment as to have developed the fist of a gorilla (which at a blow can crack a human skull), to arm himself with a club. And by thus adapting environment to his evolutionary requirements, he conserved his resources and applied them to development along higher lines. Such impotence as may be, arises out of the undevelopment of a rudimentary organism. Of an organism in course of development, however. In the meanwhile, both man and woman are provided, in their hybrid constitution, with the "makeshift" of an instrument of opposite sex, which supplies both with the powers neither has yet developed in himself or herself; but without which neither is able to exist or to function.

Hybrid Humanity is still amphibious; a creature living between two planes, the Without and the Within, the Material and the Spiritual. And like all amphibious creatures, the human species is, in a measure, clumsy and imperfect. Because while fitted still with organs and faculties that have adapted to a lower plane, it possesses likewise organs and faculties that are adapting to a higher. Its powers thus handicapped by requiring to engender the vital potential and the developmental power to equip it with two orders of implement, neither order has attained perfection of construction or of function. And both ministering to the requirements of the other, necessarily hamper the operations and mask the characteristics of the other.

The two sexes are making all the while for higher development, each along routes of its contrary trend. Man develops human faculty in the direction of the Outer and material plane of Being. Woman develops it in the direction of the Inner and psychical plane.

Man transmits to woman a brain-hemisphere and powers ever further increased and intensified in their relation to the concrete. Woman transmits to man a brain-hemisphere ever further indrawn and illumined in respect of the emotional and intrinsic. Woman's brain-hemisphere, adapting to its concrete fellow, becomes increasingly empowered to manifest, upon the outer plane, its own essential Woman-traits in Life and Consciousness. Man's brain-hemisphere, adapting to its diviner fellow, becomes increasingly illumined and inspired thereby to leaven and exalt its concrete outlook and activities.

Man's brain, by way of its responsive adaptation to the brain of woman interior to it in the zone of Mind, becomes thus ever more sympathetically intelligent, or intuitive, in respect of human life and conditions, of Science and the Arts; while losing nothing of its Dominance and concrete power, but interpreting its operations in terms of a profounder and a nobler Chivalry. Woman's brain becomes ever more intelligently sympathetic and practically helpful; losing nothing of its Recessiveness, or emotional impulse, but, on the contrary, intensifying all its Woman-attributes by extending the range and the operations of these in terms of a profounder and a nobler Altruism.

* * * * *

Because of their hybrid constitution, there is necessarily a borderland, alike of faculty and function, wherein the organisation and the characteristics of the sexes merge and approximate one another's trend and traits. This borderland represents, however, the crudest and least differentiated department of the personal and mental powers of both. It is a zone of Neuterdom, and marks a grade of rudimentary organisation in which the Sex-characteristics have not yet sufficiently diverged in development, as clearly and finely to differentiate themselves as traits of pure and unalloyed type.

The cruder the species or the evolutionary stage of species, the less Sex is specialised in it.