34 THE COMMON SENSE OF THE MILK QUESTION 



in life and we develop a nature that is more complex 

 is it wonderful or strange that some of the animal 

 functions should undergo change? 



Of course, the obvious thought suggested by such 

 speculation as this is that there would seem to be 

 no reason why the change should affect one sex only. 

 Men have been subjected to very similar changes 

 in condition; they, too, have passed from the simple 

 stolid life of the ox, their placidity stirred only by 

 the occasional outbreak of deep passion, to a life 

 that is highly complex and full of continuous excita- 

 tion. Why, then, it is natural to ask, should they 

 be free from the mental and physical changes which 

 these things have wrought in their sisters and wives ? 

 To which the answer is another question: Are they 

 free from the changes? Do we know that the de- 

 cline in fertility is & female phenomenon exclusively, 

 rather than a human phenomenon, affecting both 

 sexes ? That women should imdergo greater changes 

 than men is only natural, for they have been far more 

 violently uprooted from old and planted amid new 

 conditions. It must not be forgotten that educa- 

 tion and economic conditions have, in a very special 

 degree, suddenly thrust new measures of responsi- 

 bility upon women, making them self-reliant where 

 they were subservient and dependent; equals where 

 they had been inferiors. It may well be, it seems 

 to me, that in such phenomena as the decline of 



