256 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 



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 powerful development of 

 muscle and bone, and the resulting capacity for inter- 

 mittent- spurts of energy, involving corresponding 

 periods of rest, fall to the man ; the care of the chil- 

 dren and all the various industries which radiate from 

 the hearth, and which call for an expenditure of 

 energy more continuous, but at a lower tension, fall 

 to the woman." l 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 cer- 

 tain constitutional difference exists between male and 

 female, a difference inclining the one to a robuster 

 life and implanting in the other a certain mysterious 

 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 gener- 

 ations have been busied with one particular set of 

 occupations ; on the other side have lived and devel- 

 oped women those who for generations have been 

 busied with another and a widely different set of 

 occupations. And as occupations have inevitable 

 reactions upon mind, character, and disposition, these 

 two have slowly become different in mind and char- 

 acter and disposition. That cleavage, therefore, which 

 began in the merely physical region, is now seen to 

 extend into the psychical realm, and ends by supply- 

 ing the world with two great and forever separate 

 types. No efforts, or explanations, or expostulations 

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



