GROWTH AND REPRODUCTION. 607 



be regarded as satisfactorily sustained. There is the " earlier arrest " 

 of physical growth ; the " rather smaller growth of the nervo-muscular 

 system ; " the much longer nutritive tax demanded for the nourish- 

 ment of foetal and infant life ; the " somewhat less of general power 

 or massiveness" in feminine mental manifestations; the7'e may be, 

 " beyond this, a perceptible falling short in those two faculties, intel- 

 lectual and emotional, which are the latest products of human evolu- 

 tion — the power of abstract reasoning, and that most abstract of the 

 emotions, the sentiment of justice." It does not therefore follow that 

 these results, any or all of them, are deductions made from the " cost 

 of reproduction." Force modified and readjusted is not force sub- 

 tracted or destroyed. 



The smaller nervo-muscular system, and the diminished power or 

 massiveness of mental action, may be supposed to arise as direct re- 

 sults of the larger nutritive cost of maternity. But the earlier arrest 

 of physical growth may or may not be coupled with an earlier arrest 

 of mental development ; and one or both of these may ofier to us very 

 marked illustrations — not of process prematurely cut short to be 

 handed over to offspring — but of process quickened by other related 

 antecedents, and therefore more rapidly completed. This need not 

 involve loss or transfer of individual force to offspring ; but, rather, a 

 modified system of the transfer of substance and force from the en- 

 vironment to the reproductive functions and their products. 



If it could be shown that men or women who are the parents of 

 many children have thereby lost something of individual power, we 

 might then be forced to admit that the greater cost related to the 

 reproductive system in women must be at their personal expense, 

 not at the expense of the nutriment which they assimilate and 

 eliminate. 



The weaknesses resulting from a too early or an excessive tax of 

 functions belong to a distinct class of considerations. I assume that 

 every balanced constitutional activity, though including loss of nutri- 

 tive elements, is yet a normal aid to constitutional strength. Every 

 action, physical or psychical, involves either integration or disintegra- 

 tion ; every use of faculty belongs to the latter class. There is no 

 more antagonism between growth and reproduction than between 

 growth and thought, growth and muscular activity, growth and breath- 

 ing. The antagonism is only that of action and reaction, which are 

 but two phases of the same process — opposing phases which exist 

 everywhere, and which must exist, or action itself cease, and death 

 reign universally. 



Growth and eating are antagonistic ; yet, one must eat to live as 

 assuredly as children must be reared at the expense of nutrition, and 

 of still more elaborated parental force. Nor is it 'true that one who 

 expends least has the most remaining. Other things being equal, the 

 law seems to be directly reversed. One activity initiates another ; 



