THE NATURAL 



One uses the words instinct and intelligence to flatter 

 prejudiced people. Instinct is merely a mode of intel- 

 ligence. 



Dimorphism is a constant fact in the animal series. 

 Favourable to the male, favourable to the female, indiffer- 

 ent, it starts always from sexual necessity. There is a 

 job to be done: nature divides it equally, or not, be- 

 tween male and female. She knows neither justice nor 

 equality, and lays heavy burdens upon some, even to 

 mutilation and premature death, while she gives to 

 others liberty, leisures, and long hours of pleasant life. 

 It is necessary that the couple reproduce a certain number 

 of beings, equals of the unities of which itself is formed: 

 all means are good which attain this end, and which 

 attain it most speedily and most surely. Nature who 

 is pitiless, is also in a hurry. Her imagination, always 

 active, invents, ceaselessly, new forms which she casts 

 into life, in measure as the earlier born finish their cycle. 

 In superior mammals, and particularly in human species, 

 division of labour is the means used by nature to insure 

 the perpetuity of types. The female insect (leaving 

 aside for the moment social hymenoptera) is provided 

 at once with the organs of her sex and with tools of her 

 trade, with arms for guarding the race; the female human 

 has ceded to man the tools and weapons, here merged in 

 the one instrument, muscle. Or rather, keeping her 

 rights to the instrument, she gives up the use of it. 

 She is neither warrior, huntress, nor mason, nor butcher; 

 she is the female, and the male is the rest. The division 

 of labour supposes community. In order that the female 

 may cede the cares for subsistence and defence to the 

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