Feminism and Sex-Extinction Part 7

Girl-babies, save those of the rarer higher types, beat their mothers and nurses only rather less frequently and less fiercely than boy-babies do.

Later in their life-history, that new impulse to the evolution of the Woman-traits which characterises their development to womanhood, normally negatives and further tempers in girls the male instincts of fight and of sport. But many of our modern amazons, brought up like boys, are more male than are their brothers. The male fighting-instinct which moved man to invent a club (destructive) has become so tempered by the increasingly potent Woman-traits in him that, save when angry or at war, he is content to turn his club into a golf-stick, a cricket bat, or tennis racquet; his sword into a plough-share. Whereas, on the contrary, the Woman-traits which moved woman to invent the needle (constructive) are becoming so over-ridden by the male in her that modern woman, artificially masculinised, abhors the needle, and is almost as much dominated as the other s.e.x is by the male instinct for a weapon in the hand.

The cla.s.s, Vertebrates, would seem to represent an adaptation to environment typically Male; earlier than and contrary in trend to that of the Mammalia, whereof the impulse was obviously Female.

Increasing vertebration was characterised by such a progressive differentiation of Male from Female traits as progressively segregated these in opposite sides of the body; with spinal column and spinal cord for, respectively, physical and nervous central lines of demarcation.

Thus the Male traits were enabled more and more to detach themselves at will from Female inhibition, and thereby increasingly to specialise and exercise those powers of force and fierceness and activity by way of which species became ever more individuated; aggressive, intelligent, efficient, in terms of _Fitness_ for the struggle for survival.

Until that later evolution of female adaptation to _Unfitness_, in the sacrificial function of Lactation, inhibiting and tempering the earlier male trend, engendered the yet higher order of Mammalia.

(With that intuitive illumination inspiring speech, men and races lacking in virility are contemptuously described as being "invertebrate.")

According to this hypothesis, the paternal (and male) inherences of any mother may be said to be transmitted to the grandson in the direct male line of her heredity--an unbroken line of Maleness reaching back to its amoebic origin. While the maternal (and female) inherences of any father are transmitted, in the direct female line, to the grand-daughter--a similar line of continuity. The Woman-s.e.x and traits of the grandmother remain thus for a generation dormant, or Recessive, in the father; "skipping a generation," as the phrase is. Then, in the third generation, they re-appear in the grand-daughter; by power of a maternal contribution in which the female inherence is prepotent. While the male-s.e.x and traits of the grandfather remain dormant, or potential, in the mother; likewise "skipping a generation." Then they emerge in the grandson, by power of a male gamete evoking the inherent male in them.

VI

The attributes of the one s.e.x invested thus in the other, although normally submerged, form nevertheless a valuable endowment; supplying supplementary and complementary factors to counterpoise, to energise, and fructify the powers proper to the s.e.x of the individual.

Man bears throughout life the Woman-potential his mother transmitted to him. But it is not his to realise. He bears it in trust for his daughters. He transmits it to his daughters, and in them this potential, recovering its woman-impulse, evolves to a further degree of woman-power. The like with mothers and sons.

All of which is supported by the Mendelian doctrine that the mother transmits "Femaleness" as a Dominant factor to her daughters and as a Recessive factor to her sons.

But the method whereby this is achieved has remained a mystery.

Professor Punnett says with regard to the phenomenon:

"The mother transmits to her daughter the dominant faculty of femaleness, but to balance this, as it were, she transmits to her sons another quality which her daughters do not receive ... among human families, in respect to particular qualities, the sons tend to resemble their mothers more than their daughters do."

A striking ill.u.s.tration of such transmission by mother to son of a paternally-derived abnormal inherence _which she herself does not develop_, is found in so-called "bleeders"; persons who suffer from the disease, haemophilia. The daughters of a "bleeder" father show no symptom at all of the affliction, but they, nevertheless, pa.s.s on to their sons this male heritage of the grandfather.

There are numerous other examples of traits and diseases thus "skipping a generation"--in other words, of lying dormant, or potential, merely; overshadowed in the const.i.tution and psychology of the s.e.x to which they do not rightly belong, but developing in a succeeding generation in offspring of that s.e.x whereof they are a natural trait, or (so to speak) a natural defect.

Since the woman-half she contributes to their hybrid const.i.tution engenders the potential of their living processes, the mother may be regarded as still mothering her children throughout development and maturity, and to the end of their natural term. Accounting for that mystical sympathy between mother and child which intuitively informs her of fatalities occurring to absent sons and daughters--but to sons pre-eminently. Marvellously, they remain one living flesh so long as life persists.

During the War, mothers at a distance have known by an intuitive flash, and have told of the death of sons cut down in battle. One mother described the sensation she experienced as being precisely _as though one side of her body had been suddenly torn away_. So too, mothers whose infants have died during childbirth or shortly after, describe as persisting for months subsequently a sense as though part of them were dead.

The father too must function in the hybrid living const.i.tution. With the immense difference, however, that his part therein is a factor of the development of traits, not of the mystical functioning of Life. A notable feature of this paternal heritage is that in women at middle-age (when the wane of reproductive power releases vital potential from maternal investments) not only may masculine physical traits emerge, but there may develop in them notable brain-capacities inherited from the father. Capacities inherent in them previously, but long inhibited in action by the normal female brain-Recessiveness.

VII

Every higher evolutionary differentiation results inevitably not only in progressive mutations in the traits of species, but, as well, in variations of the reproductive processes of such. When _defects_, physical or mental, are not reproduced in later generations true to Mendelian law, however, this is not abnormal, but is beautifully normal.

Normality requires that defect--which is a deviation from The Normal--shall not be transmitted in any ratio whatsoever, but shall be corrected in a succeeding generation.

Moreover, when we realise the number and the complexities of human traits, all struggling to keep The Law, it is only to be expected that any single characteristic owing to its s.e.x-inherence, may pa.s.s into the potential or Recessive, mode, and may thus vanish for a generation.

Further, by the law of compensation, any trait or determinant, although itself Dominant, may be dwarfed and submerged by some other Dominant trait more a.s.sertive than itself.

Suppose a father normally larger and stronger than the normally shorter and weaker mother: Stature and strength being both Dominant and masculine traits, the traits of such a father, dominating the development of his sons, should so over-ride the traits of lesser strength and stature of the mother (in whom strength and stature are normally Recessive) that his sons will be tall and broad and strong, and mentally virile. On the other hand, the mother's traits, prepotent in the development of daughters, will inhibit in these and diminish the strength and stature of their paternal inherences. Thus, the woman of pure Recessive (the essential woman) type is smaller, more delicately organised, and weaker than the male.

By such means, the normal of the relative strength, stature, and mental qualifications of the s.e.xes is preserved; the specialised characteristics of both ever further diverging in trend, while at the same time intensifying their intrinsic attributes.

Suppose, however, a mother who deviates from the normal in having developed along masculine lines, and who is, accordingly, tall or strong or mentally virile: Far from supplementing, in her sons, the father's traits of strength and stature, her sons will be more or less emasculate in mind or body, or in both. Strength and stature and virile mentality not being normal to her, these can only have emerged in her and can only have been exercised by her at cost of the masculine potential she bore in trust for male offspring. A woman who wins golf or hockey-matches may be said therefore to energise her muscles with the potential manhood of possible sons. With their potential existence indeed, since over-strenuous pursuits may sterilise women absolutely as regards male offspring.

Thus it is that muscular and otherwise masculine women produce weakling males. (Giant women--female-Dominants--are incapable of reproduction.) Tall mothers may produce tall sons, by transmitting to them the single trait of tallness of the maternal grandfather. But since tallness in woman is development along masculine lines, and detracts from her maternal power, the tall son in such case is likely to be defective in other manly traits. Men are of greater height than women, mainly in consequence of greater length of leg. The power expended in the male in length of limb is absorbed in the female into complex pelvic developments, wherein it is stored as Reproductive potential.

The power thus stored in latency reveals itself in the amazing evolution, as regards capacity and muscular equipment, by way of which the maternal _uterus_ so develops during pregnancy as to enable it to cradle an infant of 9 or 10 lbs. weight, and to deliver this by output of immense energy--a marvel of biological function and mechanism.

Since the male trait of Tallness may be transmitted by woman from her father to her son, without manifesting in herself, it is obviously waste of power for her to develop a characteristic she needs neither for personal nor for hereditary purposes. Whereas, by further evolving her own woman-traits of suppleness and grace, she contributes new factors to those of the male. And so with all the other s.e.x-characteristics.

Mr. Horace G. Regnart, M.A., the well-known breeder of pedigree stock, states that a bull of marked _masculine_ characteristics sires daughters of marked _feminine_ characteristics. While the _feminine_ cow bears sons of strongly _masculine_ type. On the other hand, the daughters of a "steery" bull (a bull of de-s.e.xed type) are themselves defective in female characteristics, and bear sons defective in male characteristics.

VIII

Clearly and fully defined, accordingly, as s.e.x-characteristics are in proportion as the individual is of high and normal organisation, obtrusions in the one s.e.x of the traits of the other are as much stigmata of abnormality as are cleft-palate, webbed feet, or other deviations from the normal. Because they are reversions to lower types of organisation in which s.e.x was less highly differentiated than is the normal of to-day.

Although, with progressive evolution, the s.e.x-traits are spun ever finer and finer, and are ever more subtly and inextricably interwoven with those of the other, normally the threads run true and distinct as do the threads of warp and woof in textile fabric.

The ever finer spinning of the threads secures an ever closer, subtler interweaving. Whereby the fabric of human organisation, of character and Faculty, becomes ever firmer yet more supple, ever stronger yet more delicate, ever more intense and rich of colour, but nevertheless more beautifully harmonised and subtilised by half-tones and complex gradations.

This is the reason why the strongest and most virile men are the most humane; the sternest are most tender; the greatest are most subtle. So inextricably interwoven with their virile characteristics are the finer spun Woman-potencies, as strangely and exquisitely to temper and sensitise their Manhood's powers.

And it is why the tenderest, most womanly women are the n.o.blest; the gentlest are the most enduring; the wisest are the sweetest.

But no more than Black can be White, Acid, Alkaline, or the Straight line a Circle, can Repose be Action, Sternness be Sweetness, Firmness be Softness, Fierceness be Gentleness; a.s.sertiveness, Selflessness; Boldness, Modesty. Nevertheless, in the hybrid unfoldment of Contrasting traits, Softness tempering Fierceness transforms it to Strength; Sweetness tempering Sternness melts it to Mercy; a.s.sertiveness reinforcing Selflessness nerves it to Devotion; Firmness preserves Softness from lapsing to Weakness; Altruism, inspiring Chivalry, transfigures it to Heroism. But that Fierceness and Strength, Sweetness and Selflessness, have only intensified as, with further evolution, they have extended further into Life and Consciousness, is shown when they tear themselves asunder from their counterpoising attributes. Fierceness is seen then to be more fierce in complex man--because fierce in so many more and deeper issues of Life and Consciousness--than is the fierceness of the gorilla, which manifests largely in muscular savagery; champing of jaws, and beating on its breast as on a drum.

So too, the emotion of complex woman is more deeply rooted in her, and is more intense, than is the instinctive emotionalism of the savage woman which expresses itself mainly in reflex movements and hysterical outcries.

Thus down the ages, man, by way of Fatherhood, has endowed woman ever further with his developing traits of strength and intelligence. Woman, by way of Motherhood, has endowed man with an ever fuller heritage of her attributes of selflessness and intuition.

So these poor souls--the Man and the Woman in all men and women--have climbed the steep ascent together, hand in hand, toward the Light.

Without the other, neither could have come. So tragically drear and solitary would have been the pilgrimage, save for the spiritual converse of that mystical comrade.

Only by way of this psychical comrades.h.i.+p, which solaces the one s.e.x by the inspiration of the other, do men and women win through the terrestrial travail of the human destiny.

The mystical Man (who is her father in her) when woman would falter and fail in the fight, whispers, "Courage, dear Girl, go on!"

The mystical Woman (who is his mother in him) goes with her son into the murk and struggle of temptation, holding her lamp of The Good and The True and The Beautiful before his blinding eyes.

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