THEORY OF SEX — ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN. I 23 



certain sense too the processes of income and expenditure 

 must balance, but only to the usual extent, that expenditure 

 must not altogether outrun income, else the cell's capital of 

 living matter will be lost, — a fate which is often not successfully 

 avoided. The disruptive, or katabolic, or energy- expending 

 set of changes, may be obviously greater in one cell than in 

 another, in proportion to the constructive or anabolic processes. 

 Then, we may shortly say that the one cell is more katabolic 

 than the other, or vice versa on the opposite supposition. Just 

 as our expenditure and income should balance at the year's 

 end, but may vastly outstrip each other at particular times, so 

 it is with the cell of the body. Income too may continuously 

 preponderate, and we increase in wealth, or similarly, in weight, 

 or in anabolism. Conversely, expenditure may predominate, 

 but business may be prosecuted at a loss ; and similarly, we 

 may live on for a while with loss of weight, or in katabolism. 

 This losing game of life is what we call a katabolic habit, tend- 

 ency, or diathesis; the converse gaining one being, of course, the 

 anabolic habit, temperament, tendency, or diathesis. The words 

 anabolic and katabolic are, of course, new, unfamiliar, and un- 

 deniably ugly. Habit and temperament have very vague associa- 

 tions, and tendency sounds metaphysical; diathesis, again, seems 

 no better than the medical equivalent of this. These things the 

 reader must naturally feel; yet the medical man is now-a-days 

 quite scientific and definite in speaking of gouty or neurotic 

 diathesis, of bilious habit, strumous tendency, or the like. The 

 metaphysical vagueness is no longer chargeable to him ; still less, 

 we trust, to us. 



We are now in a position profitably to return to the Pro- 

 tozoa, to the phases of cell-life, and to the sex-elements. After 

 what we have just said, it is evident that there are but three 

 main physiological possibilities, — preponderant anabolism, or 

 predominant katabolism, or an approximate (/.<?., oscillating) 

 equilibrium between these tendencies. A growing surplus of 

 income, a lavish expenditure of energy, or a compromise in 

 which the cell lives neither far below nor quite up to its 

 income. Great passivity, great activity, or a safe average 

 between these; conservative accumulation, spendthrift liberal- 

 ism, and a compromise between these. In many different 

 ways, more or less metaphorical, may we express the plain and 

 indubitable facts of anabolism and katabolism within the living 

 matter. The student may think of the processes, with some 



