THE MALE AND THE FEMALE MIND 245 



stress on the intellectual and productive superiority 

 of men of the highest capacity. These qualities 

 undoubtedly count for very much in the world's 

 progress and are given a wide celebrity. But it is 

 by no means clear that the fine critical and human 

 qualities of the greatest women do not contribute 

 quite as much to progress, if in more indirect ways, 

 and with less public acclaim. 



Any comparison of men and women, from the 

 standpoint of their importance to the race, must be 

 futile if it aims to establish a general superiority on 

 the part of the male. And it seems to me that 

 nature relieves us from the necessity for making 

 painful academic efforts in this direction. For her 

 indications, as we read them to-day with the help of 

 scientific methods, all point to the fact that in the 

 production of a new individual, the mother and the 

 father contribute in equal degree that material which 

 is the bearer of hereditary qualities. In the equality 

 of this fusion it makes no difference whether the new 

 being is a male or a female. In either case each 

 parent gives approximately the same quantity of 

 nuclear material. The mother, indeed, contributes 

 the larger share of the total material of the impreg- 

 nated egg, but this is due to the circumstance that 

 the egg has material surrounding the essential nuclear 

 substance. This enveloping material is to be re- 

 garded as nutrient pabulum, and not as the carrier 

 of hereditary potentialities. Nor is there any reason 

 to think that the materials furnished by the female 



