256 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 



and that each has been specialized from the beginning 

 to play a separate role in the drama of life. Among 

 primitive peoples, as largely in modern times, " The 

 tasks which demand a powerful development of 

 muscle and bone, and the resulting capacity for inter- 

 mittent spurts of energy, involving corresponding 

 periods of rest, fall to the man ; the care of the chil- 

 dren and all the various industries which radiate from 

 the hearth, and which call for an expenditure of 

 energy more continuous, but at a lower tension, fall 

 to the woman." x Whether this or any theory of the 

 origin of Sex be proved or unproved, the fact remains, 

 and is everywhere emphasized in Nature, that a cer- 

 tain constitutional difference exists between male and 

 female, a difference inclining the one to a robuster 

 life and implanting in the other a certain mysterious 

 bias in the direction of what one can only call the 

 womanly disposition. 



On one side of the great line of cleavage have grown 

 up men — those whose lives for generations and gener- 

 ations have been busied with one particular set of 

 occupations ; on the other side have lived and devel- 

 oped women — those who for generations have been 

 busied with another and a widely different set of 

 occupations. And as occupations have inevitable 

 reactions upon mind, character, and disposition, these 

 two have slowly become different in mind and char- 

 acter and disposition. That cleavage, therefore, which 

 began in the merely physical region, is now seen to 

 extend into the psychical realm, and ends by supply- 

 ing the world with two great and forever separate 

 types. No efforts, or explanations, or expostulations 

 1 Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, p. 2. 



