THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 251 



nant temperament and type, the new proportion in 

 which already inextricably mingled tendencies are re- 

 arranged, and the changed environment in which, 

 with each new generation, they must unfold ; it is 

 seen how perfect an instrument for variegating 

 humanity lies here. Had sex done nothing more than 

 make an interesting world, the debt of Evolution to 

 Reproduction had been incalculable. 



THE ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MATERNITY. 



But let us not be diverted from the main stream by 

 these secondary results of the sex-distinction. A far 

 more important implication lies before us. The prob- 

 lem that remains for us to settle is as to how the 

 merely physical forms of Other-ism began to be 

 accompanied or overlaid by ethical characters. And 

 the solution of this problem requires nothing more 

 than a consideration of the broad and fundamental 

 fact of sex itself. In what it is, and in what it neces- 

 sarily implies, we shall find the clue to the beginnings 

 of the social and moral order of the world. For, rising 

 on the one hand out of maleness and on the other hand 

 out of femaleness, developments take place of such a 

 kind as to constitute this the turning-point of the 

 world's moral history. Let it be said at once that 

 these developments are not to be sought for in the 

 direction in which, from the nature of the factors, one 

 might hastily suppose that they lay. What seems to 

 be imminent at this stage, and as the natural end to 

 which all has led up, is the institution of affection m 

 definite forms between male and female. But we are 

 on a very different track. Affection between male 



