King 



real interest was not in science, but in 

 man, as he often said, meaning chiefly 

 woman. You remember his fam- 

 ous aphorism : " Nature never made 

 more than one mistake, but that was 

 fatal ; it was when she differentiated 

 the sexes." In his instincts I think 

 he regarded the male as a sort of de- 

 fence thrown off by the female, much 

 like the shell of a crab, endowed with 

 no original energy of his own ; but it 

 was not the modern woman that 

 interested him ; it was the archaic 

 female, with instincts and without in- 

 tellect. At best King had but a poor 

 opinion of intellect, chiefly because 

 he found it so defective an instru- 

 ment, but he admitted that it was all 

 the male had to live upon ; while the 

 female was rich in the inheritance of 

 every animated energy back to the 

 polyps and the crystals. If he had a 

 choice among women, it was in favor 

 of Indians and negroes, but if a wo- 

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