THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS 327 



will be a katabolic habit of body ; in the female 

 the constructive processes will be in the ascendant, 

 occasioning an opposite or anabolic habit. Trans- 

 lated into less technical language, this means that 

 the predominating note in the male will be energy, 

 motion, activity ; while passivity, gentleness, repose, 

 will characterize the female. These words, let it be 

 noticed, psychical though they seem, are yet here 

 the coinages of physiology. No other terms indeed 

 would describe the difference. Thus Geddes and 

 Thomson : " The female cochineal insect, laden with 

 reserve-products in the form of the well-known pig- 

 ment, spends much of its life like a mere quiescent 

 gall on the cactus plant. The male, on the other 

 hand, in his adult state, is agile, restless, and short- 

 lived. Now this is no mere curiosity of the ento- 

 mologist, but in reality a vivid emblem of what is 

 an average truth throughout the world of animals — 

 the preponderating passivity of the females, the free- 

 domness and activity of the males." Rolph's words, 

 because he writes neither of men nor of animals, 

 but goes back to the furthest recess of Nature and 

 characterizes the cell itself, are still more signi- 

 ficant : " The less nutritive and therefore smaller, 

 hungrier, and more mobile organism is the male ; 

 the more nutritive and usually more quiescent is 

 the female." 



