6o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



the largest individual force maintains those more active adjustments, 

 " simultaneous and successive," between the internal and external, 

 which indicate the most vigorous life. We must look, then, to some- 

 thing more than a direct antagonism, between growth and reproduc- 

 tion, to account for unlikenesses of the sexes in plant or animal. " The 

 minutest organisms multiply asexually in their millions ; " but *' those 

 which do not multiply asexually at all are a billion or a million times 

 the size of those which thus multiply with the greatest rapidity ; " yet 

 these comparative rates of growth and multiplication can offer no key 

 to any of the problems of evolution. 



Mr. Spencer reasons that birds, as a class, are less in size than 

 mammals, because they habitually expend more muscular energy in 

 flight ; and that lions, having a digestive system not superior to men, 

 yet attain to a larger size and are more prolific, because they have a 

 less active nervous system to sustain. Then, if women normally have 

 equal appropriative powers with men, the surplus nutriment not needed 

 for their smaller physiques may be constitutionally handed over to 

 reproduction. E'atural selection has originated an admirably complete 

 system of related provisions to this distinct end. This fact must lead 

 us to the conclusion that the aggregate of feminine force is the full 

 and fair equivalent of all masculine force, physical or psychical. 



The maternal constitution elaborates nutriment, from which it is 

 itself to receive no direct benefit. But, do we forget the inexorable 

 conditions which compel the human father to expend equivalent mus- 

 cular or mental force to feed, not himself, but his dependents ? When- 

 ever man does not interfere, monogamy seems to be the general order 

 of [N'ature with all higher organisms. Where the cost of obtaining 

 food is great, the parents sustain commensurate burdens in rearing 

 their young; and, with these claims, I think it will be found that 

 monogamy is the primal condition of reproduction. The warlike duty 

 of defense is also borne chiefly by males, and must often be an im- 

 mense tax on the energies. 



Among the beings of a lower type, plant and animal, all the more 

 recent observations indicate that Nature herself systematically favors 

 the females — the mothers of the destined races. Nature's sturdiest 

 buds and her best-fed butterflies belong to this sex; her female spiders 

 are large enough to eat up a score of her little males ; some of her 

 mother-fishes might parody the nursery-song, " I have a little husband 

 no bigger than my thumb." Natural selection, whether the working 

 out of intelligent design or otherwise, would make this result inevi- 

 table. We might expect that the neuter bee could be nourished into 

 the queen-mother. If required to judge a jcriori, we should decide, if 

 there is no predetermination of sex, that the best-fed embryos would 

 most readily become female ; since the one special fact in the feminine 

 organism is the innate tendency to manufacture, and, within certain 

 limits, to store up reserved force for the future needs of offspring. 



