224 SEX 



of mayors, when the argument that agri- 

 culture requires an increase of population is 

 urged, the farmer among them replies : "I 

 have a reaping and binding machine ; it does 

 the work of a dozen men, and only cost a 

 thousand francs. A child costs more." 



Mrs. Olive Schreiner, in her recent book, 

 points out that at this stage, as at many other 

 times in the history of civilisation, the 

 danger of what she calls sex-parasitism, 

 became acute. We owe to this noble writer 

 a fine historical analysis of this corruptio 

 optimi pessima, though perhaps she exag- 

 gerates the economic factors at the expense 

 of the psychological. By the sex-parasitism 

 of woman is meant the condition of depen- 

 dence for support on the performance of her 

 sex-function alone, or even on " her mere 

 potentiality in the direction of a duty which 

 she may never fulfil." Mrs. Schreiner's 

 thesis is that the parasitism of the female has 

 periodically come in as a great middle term 

 between the anti-social accumulation of 

 wealth on the part of the dominant class or 

 race and the degeneracy and ineffectiveness 

 of the males, which is followed of course by 

 racial decline. 



CRITICAL AND CONSTRUCTIVE. We have 

 outlined the biological view that there is a 

 deep constitutional distinction between man 

 and woman, and that this finds expression in 

 a large number of detailed differences, which 

 are natural in origin and natural also in 

 having survived ages of elimination. Coming 

 now, to practical theses, we may notice first 



