Specialized Life 167 



in the natural process of unconscious selection, and thus 

 add to the group of persons constituting the family, a hered- 

 ity tending to produce, beside the normal descendants, 

 others not normal, who are valuable for ability in this minis- 

 try. Men, and more often women, are thus produced in 

 civilized life who by inherited instinct, willingly reHnquish 

 the privileges of bearing in their own bodies the continuity 

 of the lineage; and others are excluded in unwilling dis- 

 ability or inferiority of those functions, yet many of these 

 live noble lives to the great profit of their kin. 



Let us look at this from the ancestor's view point. Sup- 

 pose that in a conscious ambition to found a great family a 

 wise man could direct his posterity, and in the exercise of 

 that power suppose he designed for them an organization of 

 specialized individuals, some of whom should perform one 

 work and others another work, — and so carry further, the 

 kind of specialization shown in sex function. It is quite 

 conceivable that from his point of view the production of 

 certain celibates, for the benefit of the lineage, with duties 

 accessory to the reproductive strain, would be an economy 

 of life force, and a profit to the clan, and, from his point 

 of view, such a differentiation might be made without any 

 injustice in the fact that the race life current was cut off 

 in that individual, in service to the lineage. And especially 

 could this purpose be justified if the lives thus diverted were 

 those least competent to perform normal full function. 

 Now this, which we have thus imagined as a conscious plan, 

 is what in fact occurs as unconscious evolution, and the re- 

 lations involved are seen justified, so far as justification 

 appears at all, in the sisterhood of descent, and the unit)' 



