THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 257 



can ever break down that distinction between male- 

 ness and femaleness, or make it possible to believe 

 that they were not destined from the first of time to 

 play a different part in human history. Male and 

 female never have been and never will be the same. 

 They are different in origin ; they have travelled to 

 their destinations by different routes ; they have had 

 different ends in view. The result is that they are 

 different, and the contribution therefore of each to the 

 evolution of the human race is special and unique. 

 By and bye it will be our duty to mark what Man, in 

 virtue of his peculiar gift, has done for the world; 

 part indeed of his contribution has been already re- 

 corded here. To him has been mainly assigned the 

 fulfilment of the first great function — the Struggle for 

 Life. Woman, whose higher contribution has not yet 

 been named, is the chosen instrument for carrying on 

 the Struggle for the Life of Others. Man's life, on 

 the whole, is determined chiefly by the function of 

 Nutrition ; Woman's by the function of Reproduction. 

 Man satisfies the one by going out into the world, and 

 in the rivalries of war and the ardors of the chase, in 

 conflict with Nature, and amid the stress of industrial 

 pursuits, fulfilling the law of Self-preservation ; 

 Woman completes her destiny by occupying herself 

 with the industries and sanctities of the home, and 

 paying the debt of Motherhood to her race. 



Now out of this initial difference — so slight at first 

 as to amount to no more than a scarcely perceptible 

 bias — have sprung the most momentous issues. For 

 by every detail of their separate careers the two 

 original tendencies — to outward activity in the man ; 

 to inward activity, miscalled passivity, in the woman 

 17 



