328 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



Now what do these facts indicate ? They in- 

 dicate that maleness is one thing and femaleness 

 another, and that each has been specialized from 

 the beginning to play a separate role in the drama 

 of life. Among primitive peoples, as largely in 

 modern times, " The tasks which demand a power- 

 ful development of muscle and bone, and the 

 resulting capacity for intermittent spurts of energy, 

 involving corresponding periods of rest, fall to the 

 man ; the care of the children and all the various 

 industries which radiate from the hearth, and 

 which call for an expenditure of energy more con- 

 tinuous, but at a lower tension, fall to the woman." ^ 

 Whether this or any theory of the origin of Sex 

 be proved or unproved, the fact remains, and is 

 everywhere emphasized in Nature, that a certain 

 constitutional difference exists between male and 

 female, a difference inclining the one to a robuster 

 life, and implanting in the other a certain mysteri- 

 ous bias in the direction of what one can only 

 call the womanly disposition. 



On one side of the great line of cleavage have 

 grown up men — those whose lives for generations 

 and generations have been busied with one par- 

 ticular set of occupations ; on the other side have 

 lived and developed women — those who for gener- 

 ^ Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman^ p. 2. 



