86 TABOO AND GENETICS 



the best adapted to the given surroundings. If 

 all these animals continued to live side by side 

 in the given environment, they could be com- 

 pared only as to specific details — size, strength, 

 cunning, fleetness in running, swimming or 

 flying, concealment from enemies, etc. Then 

 the biologist would probably make his meaning 

 perfectly clear by stating that one is specialized 

 in one direction or another. 



Especially is general superiority a vague idea 

 when the things compared are different but 

 mutually necessary or complementary. If their 

 functions overlap to some extent (i. e., if 

 certain acts can be performed by either), we 

 may say that one is better adapted to a certain 

 activity than the other. Thus it may be that 

 women are generally better adapted to caring 

 for young children than are men, or that men 

 are on the whole better adapted to riveting 

 boiler plates, erecting skyscrapers, or sailing 

 ships. Where their activities do not overlap 

 at all, even the word adaptation hardly applies. 

 For example, women are not better " adapted " 

 to furnishing the intra-maternal environment 

 for the young, since men are not adapted to it 

 at all. It is a case of female specialization. 



Men being neither specialized nor adapted, 

 to any extent whatever, to this particular 

 activity, any attempt at comparison is obviously 

 fruitless, since one term is always zero. This 



