REPRODUCTION AND SEX 567 



attempts to minimise them are very unlikely to spell progress. It 

 suggests that while the expressions of the deep constitutional dis- 

 tinction are various in value — some trivial and some important — 

 they are correlated, they hang together. To change the metaphor, 

 the particular streams of femininity have the like origin as the 

 rivulet which bears the developing embryo into femaleness. 



Though as yet there is no unanimous finding of the biological 

 court in regard to the essential nature of the constitutional dis- 

 tinction between male and female, some approximation to certainty 

 and unanimity has been reached in studying its detailed expressions. 

 We have said that the fundamental distinction crops out in every 

 comer and penetrates into every recess, and its detailed expressions 

 can be measured. It is here that precise science begins; but it has 

 not more than begun. "We cannot do more than single out some of 

 the representative data which seem to be instructive. 



As everyone knows, there is a whole series of anatomical facts 

 which support the generalisation that in certain respects man's 

 body is more specialised, going farther away from the youthful and 

 primitive type. This cannot be explained away as wholly due to 

 difference in activities. It is partly connected with the fact that 

 man is longer of reaching maturity. 



Ranke notes that the typical female form has a relatively longer 

 trunk, shorter arms, legs, hands and feet; relatively to the short 

 upper arms, still shorter forearms; and relatively to the short 

 thighs, still shorter lower legs; and relatively to the whole short 

 upper extremity, a still shorter lower extremity — and so on. In 

 short, the woman is a less muscular, less motor type, in some ways 

 more babe-like, in other ways more permanently adolescent. 



What is suggested anatomically is corroborated physiologically; 

 for tests show that the muscular strength of men is greater than 

 that of women. This is borne out by careful experiments made 

 between men and women physically trained, and of equal size and 

 age. But caution is suggested by many observations. The rapidity 

 with which little Japanese women will coal a vessel is said to be 

 unsurpassable by men. Some of the bygone feats of Newhaven 

 fishwives, carrying heavy creels for many miles, were extraordinary. 

 Yet, to cite the quick collapse of a big strong man, who tries to help 

 his little wife in carrying the sick baby about for a night or two, is 

 just as useless as to point out that railway porters and engine-drivers 

 are never women. On the whole, it seems safe to say that man is the 

 more muscular type, and especially stronger in relation to isolated 

 feats and spasmodic efforts. 



Probably correlated and probably in part of similar deep origin 

 is the quality often called "energy" — the characteristic masculine 

 restlessness. Very hesitatingly we may perhaps go so far as to speak 

 of woman's constitution and temper as more conservative, of man's 



