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I INTRODUCTION--THE STARTING-POINT OF THE INQUIRY 1

PART I--BIOLOGICAL SECTION

II THE ORIGIN OF THE SEXES 31

V COURTSHIP, MARRIAGE, AND THE FAMILY 85 I Among the Birds and Mammals. II Further Examples of Courtship, Marriage, and the Family among Birds.

PART II--HISTORICAL SECTION

INTRODUCTION--THE STARTING-POINT OF THE INQUIRY

INTRODUCTION--THE STARTING-POINT OF THE INQUIRY

"The method of investigating truth commonly pursued at this time, therefore, is to be held erroneous and almost foolish, in which so many inquire what others have said, and omit to ask whether the things themselves be actually so or not."--WILLIAM HARVEY.

The twentieth century will, we may well believe, be stamped in the records of the future as "the age of hurrying change." In certain directions this change has resulted in a profounder transformation of thought than has been effected by all the preceding centuries. Never, probably, in the history of the world were the meanings and ambitions of progress so prevalent as they are to-day. An energy of inquiry and an endless curiosity is sweeping away the complacent Victorian attitude, which in its secure faith and tranquil self-confidence accepted the conditions of living without question and without emotion. Stripped of its masks, this phase of individual egoism was perhaps the most villainous page of recorded human history; yet, with strange confidence, it regarded itself as the very summit of civilisation. It may be that such a phase was necessary before the awakening of a social conscience could arise. Old conceptions have become foolish in a New Age. A great motive, an enlarging dream, a quickening understanding of social responsibility, these are what we have gained.

Above all, this common Faith of Progress has brought a new birth to women. Many are feeling this force. There are two, says Professor Karl Pearson, and it might almost be said only two great problems of modern social life--they are the problem of woman and the problem of labour. Regarded with fear by many, they are for the younger generation the sole motors in life, and the only party cries which in the present can arouse enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and a genuine freemasonry of class and sex.

There is something almost staggering in the range and greatness of the changes in belief and feeling, in intellectual conclusions and social habits, which are now disturbing the female part of humankind. How complete is the divorce between the attitude of the woman of this generation towards society and herself, and that of the generation that has passed--yes, passed as completely as if hundreds and not units represent the years that separate it from the present.

It is instructive to note in passing what was written about woman at the time immediately preceding the present revolt of the sex. The virtue upon which most stress was laid was that of "delicacy," a word which occurs with nauseous frequency in the books written both by women and men in the two last centuries. "Propriety," wrote Mrs. Hannah More, "is to a woman what the great Roman citizen said action is to an orator: it is the first, the second, and the third requisite."

"This delicacy or propriety," it has been well said, "implied not only modesty, but ignorance; and not only decency of conduct, but false decency of mind. Nothing was to be thoroughly known, nothing to be frankly expressed. The vicious concealment was not confined to physical facts, but pervaded all forms of knowledge. Not only must the girl be kept ignorant of the principles of physiology, but she must also abstain from penetrating thoroughly into the mysteries of history, of politics, of science, and of philosophy. Even her special province of religion must be lightly surveyed. She was not required to think for herself, therefore she was deprived of all training which would enable her to think at all. The girl must appear to be dependent upon the mental strength of a man, as well as upon his physical strength."

It is necessary to remember this attitude if we are to understand the direction that woman's emancipation has largely--and, as some of us think, mistakenly--taken in this country. It explains the demand for equality of opportunity with men, which has become the watch-cry of so many women, thinking that here was the way to solve the problem. A cry good and right in itself, but one which is a starting-point only for woman's freedom, and can never be its end.

During the first period of the woman's movement the centre of restlessness was amongst unmarried women, who rebelled at the old restrictions, eager for self-development and a more intellectually active life. These women undertook their own cause, insisting that their humanity came before their sex. They were picked women, much above the average woman, and to a certain extent abnormal in so far as they denied the important factor of sex. To them the average male was not a subject of overwhelming interest, and marriage and motherhood were not of prominent importance in their thought. For them "equality of opportunity for women with men" seemed to solve the problem of woman's emancipation. The constructive result of their campaign was the winning of the higher education of woman, the right to work, and the rush of women into the professions. Much, indeed, was gained, though it may be said with equal truth that much was lost. With this solution--the increased power of self-realisation in a narrow class of picked women, chiefly unmarried women of the middle-class--the woman's movement might well begin, but in this alone it can never end. The movement was incomplete as far as woman's emancipation went, because it was won by ignoring sex. In spite of the great advance in freedom and in scope of activity of life, the stigma attached to woman was not removed. To-day we have arrived at a point where instead of ignoring sex we must affirm it, and claim emancipation on the ground of our sex alone. Our mothers taught acceptance, and asked for privileges; the pioneers of revolt raised the cry "acceptance is a sin and all privilege evil"; we, the blood in our veins beating more strongly and understanding at last the true inwardness of our power, found our claim for complete emancipation upon that special work in the world and for the State which our differentiation from men imposes upon us. This differentiation is our potentiality for motherhood, and is the endowment of every woman, whether realised or not. We claim as our glory what our mothers accepted as their burden of shame.

No sudden causeless changes ever happen, or ever have happened. And the question, Why? arises. What is this dynamic force which has been, and is still sweeping in a great wave of emancipation across the civilised world, joining women in one common purpose? On the outside the revolutionary character of women's modern thought and modern practice means nothing more than that they claim the rights of adult human beings--political enfranchisement, the right of education and freedom to work. But the facts are far too complex to enable us thus to rush hastily to an answer. There is a pitiful monotony in much that is written and spoken about women's emancipation. The real causes are deep to seek, and not infrequently they have been missed even by those who have been most instrumental in bringing a new hope to women. The most advanced women champions, the martyrs of revolt, show no greater sense of the meanings and issues of the struggle in which they are engaged than the complaisant supporters of the worn-out customs they combat. They exhibit only the energies of an admirable impulse, without the control of a guiding law. Speculation, which should be carried to a comprehension of general facts, is concentrated upon the immediate gain of the hour. The tendency is to trifle with truth, and to disguise its reach and consequences. We have read, and spoken, and thought so much about the special character of woman that we have become almost wearied of the subject. Like Narcissus, we stand in some danger of falling in love with our own image. Perhaps the truth is we speculate too much instead of trying to find out the facts. The woman question is as old as sex itself and as young as mankind.

The future position of woman in society is a question that carries with it biological and psychological, as well as social and practical, issues of the widest significance, and further, it is bound up intimately with the profoundest riddles of existence. The problems remain to a great extent unsolved. But the conviction forces itself that the emancipation of woman will ultimately involve a revolution in many of our social institutions. It is this that brings fear to many. Yet we must remember that woman's emancipation is no new movement, but has always been with us, although with varying prominence at different times in history. In the past, civilisations have fallen, in part at least, because they failed to develop in equal freedom their women with their men. It is also certain that no civilisation in the future can remain the highest if another civilisation adds to the intelligence of its male population the intelligence of its women. This in itself is enough to condemn all ideas of sex inequality.

The struggle for the Suffrage has intensified many problems which it will take all the intellectual and emotional energy of both men and women to solve. Up till now there has been little more than a fight for mere rights against male monopolies. In the near future this struggle must lead to a realisation of the duties of woman, founded on a level-headed facing of the physiological realities of her nature. It is a complete disregard of sexualogical difficulties which renders so superficial and unconvincing much of the talk which proceeds from the "Woman's Rights" platform. All efforts made to understand the sex problem, which is the woman question, must be based on the full knowledge of the physical capacity of woman and the effect that her emancipation will have on her function of race production. All effort ought to be directed towards the future welfare and happiness of the children who are to follow us. This is the goal of woman's struggle for progress, it is the sole end worthy of it.

My first purpose is to make this clear.

To-day we are faced with the question whether the predominance of man over woman is to be regarded as a natural, and therefore inviolable, law of the male and female. Some will deny this mastery of the male. It may be said that woman sways man more than he rules her. This is true. The influence of woman is important--fearfully important. Yet the fitting answer to such glossing--if it be necessary really to point out that sexual privilege is not personal power--is that such government is exercised in one direction alone, and arises not from woman's strength, but out of her subjection. Women have rendered back to men the ill that this long sex domination has wrought upon them. None the less have we to reckon with the despotism of the male side of life. "The softening influence of woman!" ... It is a pretty phrase; but all the same women and men have been doing their best to degrade each other to a pitiful mediocrity. It is not the purifying influence of women--the theory of chivalrous moralists--but an unguided and therefore deteriorating sexual tyranny that regulates society. Let us have done with this absurd catch-phrase of "Woman's Influence." No influence worth naming as such can be exercised but by an independent mind. Women need better fields for the exercise of their love of power. The sexual sphere, which has shaped an impalpable prison around them, has barred them from that part of life which is social and broadly human; the falsely feminine has been developed to the loss of the womanhood in them. It is only in obedience to man that woman has gained her power of life. She has borne children at his will and for his pleasure. She has received her very consciousness from man: this has been her womanhood, to feel herself under another's will. There is no possible hiding of the truth; if women influence men, men command life.

But is it possible, looking forward to new conditions of society, now approaching like a long-delayed spring, to foresee a remedy? Can the woman of the future belong to herself? What are her natural disabilities, and to what extent are they modifiable by new arrangements of social and domestic life? Must she be content for the future with that dependence on the individual man which has been her fate in the past; or, on the other hand, can she take up her economic and social position in society and work therein for her own maintenance as free from considerations of her sex as a man can? These are the questions which must be faced when united womanhood begins to formulate their wants and to realise their power. It is almost idle in the present transition to speculate as to what women should or should not be, or the work they should or should not do. Women do not yet know what they want. All that can be done is to note the changes that are taking place, for we cannot, even do we wish, now change the revolutionary forces. We must seek to understand their causes, so that we may be able to direct them in the future in such ways as will tend to the greater solidarity and happiness of women and men.

Many features of the social and psychic as well as the physical phenomena of human life have what we may call an organismal mainspring, and become more intelligible when traced back to these. No one, for instance, can appreciate the social significance of sex, or account for the existing sexual relationships in human societies, who does not know something of their biological antecedents. Take again the sex differences, which attain to such complexity and importance in the human civilised races, these can be explained only if their origin is recognisable. To comprehend the higher forms of life we must gain an acquaintance with the lower and more formative types. In this way we shall begin to see something of that continual upward change under the action of love's-selection that has developed the female and the male. Many problems that have brought sorrow and perplexity to us to-day will become recognisable as we ascertain their causes, and then we can do much to remove them. Thus the problem of woman must first be considered from a biological point of view. Explorations must be made into the remote and obscure beginnings of sex. We must carry our investigations back beyond the cycle of man, and trace the growth and uses of the differentiation of the sexes from the lowest forms of life.

Biology, a science hardly more than a century old, is still in the descriptive and comparative stage; it is the scientific study of the present and past history of animal life for the purpose of understanding its future history. It is of vital importance to human welfare in the future that we should learn by this comparative study of origins and of the potent past what are the lines along which progress is to be expected.

This, then, will be the first path of our discovery. We shall have to traverse many past ages of life and to consider certain humble organisms, before we shall be able really to understand woman in her true position in the sexual relationship as we find it to-day.

But the possibility of applying biological results to sociology with any hope of enlightenment depends on an understanding of the questions, How? and Why? It is important to know what the phenomena are, but it is yet more important to know how? and for what reason? they have come about. Thus we are led forward always from facts to their efficient causes. Women are found to differ from men in this or that respect. But this in itself decides nothing. As soon as we are informed as to any one difference, we must seek out its cause; and this we must do over and over again. Hundreds of women must be interrogated, observed and reported upon--and then what? Shall we know the answer to our problem? Certainly not. In each case we must ask: Is this difference we have found between the sexes a natural inborn quality of woman, whether it be physical or psychical, that must be regarded as a right and unalterable part of her woman character, or is it an acquired, and therefore changeable, modification that has been superimposed upon her through the artificial sexual, social and economic circumstances of her environment? The mere asking of this question will give many new discoveries.

Life is a relation between two forces: on the one hand the organism and on the other the external conditions that form the environment. These two processes are known as Nature and Nurture, they are complementary and inseparable, and they act together. Thus the organism modifies its surroundings, and is in turn modified by them. But every life possesses in great degree the power of self-adaptation, and, broadly speaking, it is true that no matter under what conditions it may be compelled to live, it will mould its own life into harmony with those conditions and thus continue its existence, and this whether it is compelled to adopt a more perfect or a less perfect character. It becomes evident that an appropriate environment is necessary if the Nature is to be expressed, or expressed fully; otherwise life cannot realise development. The environment is constantly checking and modifying the inheritance. Nurture supplies the liberating stimulus to the inheritance, and growth is limited, in exact measurement by the Nurture stimuli available. Human advancement is, of course, widely different from the slow progress in the lower forms of life, but it is fundamentally the same. Experience is continually spreading over new fields and bringing about a more wide and exact relation between the individual and the external world. It follows that any change in the environment will cause a change in the individual. To live differently from what one had been living is to be different from what one has been. These are simple biological facts.

It would seem, then, that Nurture is more important than Nature in seeking to explain the character of woman to-day. Yet, let me not be mistaken, nor let it be thought for one moment that I do not realise the importance of Nature. The first right of every human being is the right of being well-born. This is the goal of all our struggles for progress--it is the sole end worthy of them.

Let me try to make this clearer.

We see that the heredity relation is an extremely complex affair. It is not merely dual from the parents; but it is multiple, through them reaching back to the grand-parents, great-grand-parents, great-great-grand-parents, and so on backwards indefinitely. It is, indeed, a mosaic of many, yes, of uncountable, contributions. The Life Force gathering within itself these multiple sets of heredity contributions is like capital ever growing at compound interest. The importance of this is abundantly clear. For as we come to understand the continuity of our inheritance from generation to generation we realise more vividly how the past has a living hand on and in the present, and how that present will be carried on to the future. We are all links in the one mighty Chain of Life, and on us, and upon women especially, rests a high responsibility. We must hand on our past inheritance unimpaired, so that the new link forged by us may strengthen and not weaken the chain. It is the duty of every woman as a potential mother of men to choose a fitting father for her children, having first educated herself for a freer and more capable maternity. In the past she has done this blindly, following the Life Force without understanding, or hindered from her purpose by the artificial conditions of society. In the future such blindness and such failure of her powers will alike be regarded as sin. With full knowledge, woman will fulfil her great central purpose of breeding the race--ay, breeding it to heights now deemed impossible, not dreamt of even by those of us who look forward through the darkness to the clear sunlight of that time when the sex relation shall be freed from economic pressure and from all coercion of a false morality, and the universal creative energy, no longer finding gratification alone in personal ends, shall at last reach its goal and give birth to a race of new women and new men.

But to come back from this dream of the future.

Certain facts now become evident. In the inheritance of each individual are many latent qualities that do not find expression. It is as if in every life the separate heredity qualities, or groups of qualities, wait in competition, and those that succeed and find an expression in each life owe their success to an incalculable number of small and mostly unknown circumstances. One is tempted to speculate as to a possible direction in the future of women that may arise from the liberating of these unknown forces; but as yet we have not a sufficient basis of facts. But one truth must not be lost sight of; the unsuccessful qualities that do not find their expression in an individual life may remain to be handed on for new competition to a new generation. No one of the forces of our inheritance, be it for good or for evil, is dead; rather it sleeps till that time when the liberating powers of Nurture call it into active expression. There is real biological truth in the saying, "Every man is a potential criminal"; but it is equally true that every one is a possible saint. And there is one point further; we know that those qualities which do succeed in the competition of the inheritance, and which form at birth the character of the individual, are very different from their actual expression in the development of life, where perforce such qualities are modified to the environment. What we are is no certain criterion of what we are capable of becoming. For every item of our inheritance requires an appropriate growth-soil if it is actively to live. Each life is an adjustment of internal character to external conditions. A garden that has been choked with weeds may remain flowerless for many succeeding years, but dig that garden, and sleeping flowers, not known to live within the memory of man, may spring to life. May it not be that in the garden of woman's inheritance there are buried seeds, lying dormant, which at the liberating touch of opportunity may reawaken and assert themselves as forgotten flowers? Yes, to-day this seems a practical fact that already is being accomplished, and not a futile speculation. The re-birth of woman is no dream. At last she is realising the arrest in her development that has followed the acceptance of a position which forces her to be a parasite and a prostitute.

"We have not succeeded," he says, "in determining the radical and essential character of men and women uninfluenced by external modifying conditions. We have to recognise that our present knowledge cannot tell us what they might be, but what they actually are, under the conditions of civilisation.... The facts are so numerous that even when we have ascertained the precise significance of some one fact, we cannot be sure that it is not contradicted by other facts. And so many of the facts are modifiable under a changing environment that in the absence of experience we cannot pronounce definitely regarding the behaviour of either the male or female organism under different conditions."

Only a knowledge of the multifarious and complex environmental forces, which in the past have moulded women into what to-day they are, will lead us to our goal. We may examine woman's present character, both physical and mental, with every precision of detail, but the knowledge gained will not settle her inborn Nature. We shall discover what she is, not what she might be. No, rather to do this we must go back through many generations to primitive woman. We must study, in particular, that period known as the Mother-Age, when we find an early civilisation largely built up by woman's activity and developed by her skill. We must find out every fact that we can of woman's physical and mental life in this first period of social growth; we must examine the causes which led to the change from this Mother-rule to that of the Father-rule, or the patriarchate, which succeeded it. Insight into the civilisations of the past is of special value to us in trying to solve our problems of woman's true place in the social life. For one thing, we shall learn that morality and sexual customs and institutions are not fixed, but are peculiar to each age, and are good only in so far as they fulfil the needs of any special period of a people's growth. We must note, in particular, the contributions made by woman to early civilisation, and then seek the reasons why she has lost her former position of power. The savage woman is nearer to Nature than we ourselves are, and in learning of her life we shall come to an understanding of many of the problems of our lives.

This, then, must be the second path of our discovery, and, following it, we shall gain further knowledge of what is artificial and what is real in the character of woman and in the present relations of the sexes.

We find that the external surroundings that influence life are referable to one of two classes: those which tend to increase destructive processes, and find their active expression in expenditure of energy, and those which tend to increase constructive processes, and are passive instead of active, storing energy, not expending it. These two classes of external forces, disruptive and constructive, are called katabolic and anabolic. Looking back on the early natural lives of men and women, we find there has been a very sharp separation in the play of these opposite sets of influences. A hasty survey of the facts suffices to prove that the work of the world was divided into two great parts, the men had the share of killing life, whether that of man or of animals, their attention was given to fighting and hunting; while the women's share was the continuing and nourishing life, their attention being given to the domestic arts--to agriculture and the attendant stationary industries. Woman's position during the matriarchate was largely the result of the need in primitive society of woman's constructive energy, and her power arose from an unfettered use of her special functions. But this divergence of the paths of women from the paths of men continued, and during the patriarchal period became arbitrary with the withdrawal of women from initiative labour, an unnatural arrangement which arose out of later social conditions. The militant side of social activities has belonged to men, the passive to women; and men have been goaded into growth by the conditions and struggles of their lives. They have gathered around themselves a special man-formed environment of institutions and laws, of activities and inventions, of art and literature, of male sentiments, and male systems of opinions, to which they are connected in subtle and numerous relations, and this complex heritage of influences has been reimposed on men generation by generation. In this social working-life women have not had an equal part--and a drag in their development has arisen as the result of this passivity. At a certain period in civilisation women became an inferior class because men with their greater range of opportunities, which brought them within a wider and more variable circle of influences, developed a superior fitness on the motor side. Another contrast is very evident, men's work being performed under more striking circumstances and with more apparent effort and danger, drew to itself prestige, which women's work did not receive; their work, on the contrary, was held in contempt.

Yet, in this connection, it is necessary to say emphatically that, in its origin, there was nothing arbitrary in this division between the sexes. It was, in itself, a natural outcome of natural causes, arising out of the needs of primitive societies. There is nothing derogatory to woman in accepting the passive or, more truly, the constructive power of her nature; rather it is her chief claim for the regaining of her true position in society. I wish at once to say how far it is from my desire to judge woman from a male standpoint. The power and nature that are woman's are not secondary to man's; they are equal, but different, being co-existent and complementary--in fact, just the completion of his.

There is another point that must be made clear.

The separation in the social activities of women and men was not brought about, as is stated so frequently, by men's injustice to women. There is an unfortunate tendency to regard the subjection of woman as wholly due to male selfishness and tyranny. Many leaders of woman's freedom hold to this view as their broad exposition of principle. Such belief is illogical and untrue. It cannot be too often repeated that sex-hatred means retrogression and not progress. I do not mean to say that women have not suffered at men's hands. They have, but not more than men have suffered at their hands. No woman who faces facts can deny this truth. Neither sex can afford to bring railing accusations against the other. The old doctrine of blame is insufficient. Women's disabilities are not, in their origin at least, due to any form of male tyranny. I believe, moreover, that any solution of the woman problem, and of woman's rights, is of ridiculous impotence that attempts to see in man woman's perpetual oppressor. The enemy, if enemy there is, of woman's emancipation, is woman herself.

I am brought back to the object of this book.

To institute reform successfully needs a wider spirit. We must face sex problems with biological and historical knowledge. Before we can understand women's present position in society, or even suggest a future, we must examine the place she has filled in the civilisations of the past; we must fix, too, the part the female half of life has played in the evolution of the sexes. Yet an inquiry into facts is only the first stage, and not the final. When we can go on from these facts to their results, and learn the reasons of what we have discovered, we shall become to some extent, at least, prepared. Then, and then only, can we venture to look forward and intelligently suggest whither the present revolution is leading us.

FOOTNOTES:

PART I

BIOLOGICAL SECTION

THE ORIGIN OF THE SEXES

THE ORIGIN OF THE SEXES

"Before studying the sexual relations, and their more or less regulated form in human societies, it will not be out of place to say a few words on reproduction in general, to sketch briefly its physiology in so far as this is fundamental, and, to show how tyrannical are the instincts whose formation has been determined by physiological causes."--LETOURNEAU.

Let us now, as the first path of our inquiry, turn our attention to that biological point of view which is indispensable and fundamental if we are to understand those primary emotions, impulses and differences of the sexes, of deep organic origin, which were rooted long ago in the lowest forms of life, and hence were passed on to man from his pre-human ancestors. No apology is needed for this inquiry; for in these uncounted ancestral forces, dating back to the remote beginnings of life, we shall find hints, at least, of many things which lead up to and explain those problems which must be solved, before we can determine the true position of woman in the complex sexual relations of our social life. We cannot deny our lineage. The force which drove life onwards from the start drives it still to-day. The reproductive impulse is the chief motor of humanity; our seed is eternal. And the point of view that I wish to make clear is that the sex-impulses, which are, as few will deny, the base of the present unrest among women, have an inconceivably long history, and thus spring up within us with a tremendous organic momentum. To deny this force is futile, to suppress it impossible; all that can be done is to so regulate its expression that it may serve life instead of waste it. Implanted in every normal life is an instinctive desire to function in two ways: to grow and to reproduce, from the simple cell to the highest type of life, including man and woman, these two desires are essential and imperative. The irresistible Force of Life has been inherited by us from millions of ancestral lovers. Only when furnished with a re-interpretative clue to the origin of sex and its functioning can we come to realise its strength and its beauty, far stronger, far subtler, than we suspected before. It is the shirking of these life-facts that has resulted so often in error.

And let no one resent or think useless such an analogy between animal love-matings and our own. In tracing the evolution of our love-passions from the sexual relations of other mammals, and back to those of their ancestors, and to the humbler, though scarcely less beautiful, ancestors of these, we shall discover what must be considered as essential and should be lasting, and what is false in the conditions and character of the sexes to-day; and thereby we shall gain at once warning in what directions to pause, and new hope to send us forward. We shall learn that there are factors in our sex-impulses that require to be lived down as out-of-date and no longer beneficial to the social needs of life. But encouragement will come as, looking backwards, we learn how the mighty dynamic of sex-love has evolved in fineness, without losing its intensity, how it is tending to become more mutual, more beautiful, more lasting. And this gives us new hope to press forward on that path which woman even now is travelling, wherein she will be free from the risk of clinging to conditions of the past, which for so long have dragged her evolution in the mire.

The same force that pushed life into existence tends to increase and perpetuate it. For when the great Force of Life has once started, the same movements which constitute that life continue, and give rise to nutrition, the first of the great faculties, or powers, of life. Then, after this growth has been carried to a certain point, the organism from the superabundance of nutrition is furnished with a surplus growing energy, by means of which it reproduces itself, whence arises the second of the great life faculties. We thus have the two essential forces of life--the preservative force and the reproductive force, arising alike from nutrition. Food to assure life and growth for the individual; reproduction, an extension of the same process, to ensure the continuance of the species. We thus see the truth of Haeckel's definition that "reproduction is a nutrition and growth of the organism beyond its individual mass," or in biological formula, "a discontinuous growth."

It is well to grasp at once this first conception of reproduction as simply an extension of nutrition, if we are to free our minds from misconception. It is a common belief that the original purpose of sex is to ensure reproduction, whereas fundamentally it is not necessary to propagation at all. It is perfectly true, of course, that in the majority of animals, and also in many plants, an individual life begins in the union of two minute elements, the mother egg-cell and the sperm father-cell. But this is not the earliest stage, and below these higher forms we find a great world of life reproducing without this sex-process by simple separation and growth. In these unicellular organisms reproduction is known as asexual, because there are no special germ-cells, nor is there anything corresponding to fertilisation. The most common forms are by division into two; by budding, a modified form of division; by sporulation, a division into many units.

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