"I am for you and you are for me, Not only for your own sake, but for others" sakes, Envelop"d in you, sleep great heroes and bards, They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me."
_Walt Whitman._
I
A French biologist has discovered that when a female oyster is starved, and its const.i.tution thus deteriorated, it becomes transformed into a male.
The male oyster must be inferior, therefore, in organisation to the female. Its const.i.tutional potential is less, since the const.i.tutional potential of the female contains both its own, and the potential of the male. And the lesser, it is admitted, cannot contain the greater; although higher evolutionary forms, when subjected to conditions which preclude them from sustaining these their higher forms, may lapse to modes less complex.
Further and more striking examples of such s.e.x-transformation are afforded by so-called "mules," or "neuters," which occur in other species. A well-known case is that of a pea-hen belonging to Lady Tynte.
Having laid eggs from which chicks were raised, this pea-hen, after moulting, developed feathers proper to the other s.e.x; appearing like a pied peac.o.c.k. In the third year the same phenomenon occurred in her; she developed spurs, moreover, resembling those of the c.o.c.k. _She never bred after this change in her plumage._
As already mentioned, kindred phenomena of s.e.x-metamorphosis are observed in women after operations involving removal of reproductive glands.
That the female is, indeed, a more complex order of organisation than the male, is not to be doubted, since masculine characteristics emerge from it when it lapses from its normal of condition.
Adolescence as it occurs in the boy and in the girl emphasises this conclusion.
To the age of twelve or thereabouts, the normal boy- and girl-child are like enough to one another; smooth-skinned, active, simple creatures.
The boy is, normally, larger, st.u.r.dier, stronger and rougher than the girl. But, save for the cut of their hair and of their clothes, the two are very similar.
With the transition to manhood and womanhood, respectively, notable differences accrue, however.
From having been a strong, young, active, boy-like creature, now--provided her development be allowed to take the normal course--the girl loses physical activity and strength. A phase of invalidation sets in. Instinctively, she no longer runs and romps. New languors invest her in mind and in body. She is indisposed to brain-work or to much exertion. She lounges and muses. Her mind is clouded with the mists of awakening sensibilities. She suffers from la.s.situdes.
She becomes a complex of disabilities, indeed; disabilities which in delicate, sickly or over-taxed girls, show in chlorosis, anaemia, hysteria and other ills. Obviously, profound changes, with re-adjustments of her const.i.tutional resources, are taking place in her.
And most significant of these is that which shows like an _arrest_ of development, physical and intellectual. Because, normally, she develops but little further along direct lines of intellect and muscle. Yet that she is still developing, and this upon wholly new--subtler, higher and more complex lines, is manifest at the end of this transition-period whence she emerges, a woman.
Her developmental arrest and her disabilities (resulting from an intensification of Recessive processes in her) are seen now to have subserved a phase of higher evolution. Nature suddenly locked the door upon her differentiating and escaping energies, in order that these might be conserved and knit into organisation. The active muscularity she has lost reappears in the new factors of symmetry and delicate modelling of limb; in repose and grace of movement. The straight, slim, boy-like lines of the hoyden girl have evolved into the curves and rounded suppleness and beauties of a woman. The girlish, agile and abrupt movements have pa.s.sed into a woman"s poise and grace. The unformed features of the child have become now delicately modelled; the curveless, emotionless lips have bloomed into the flower-like, rosy fullness of a woman"s mouth; pa.s.sionate and tender. New mystery and brilliance light her eyes. Eyes and brows are charged with potencies; with seriousness, with modesty, serenity, elusiveness. Hair and hands, voice and expression, have become transfigured by the magic of a re-creative impulse which has regenerated her whole being.
So too her brain development, arrested along lines of concrete intellection, is seen to have evolved to higher, subtler forms of mentality; to be instinct with delicacy, sympathy, tact, and with that incalculable mode of supra-conscious cerebration which is intuition. In so far as she is of high, womanly type, she is now warm and emotional, sympathetic, intuitive; consciously pure, yet delicately pa.s.sionate.
From a crude and s.e.xless hoyden, she has evolved into an exquisite complexity; invested all round with higher values, human and psychical.
As in their earliest beginnings, however, so now again the Woman-traits manifest as Unfitnesses. Her new departure has actually undone in her much that had been achieved in physical adaptation.
Biologists, observing this arrest of development in the female, have interpreted it as sign of an organisation inferior to that of the male.
In point of fact, the contrary is the case. Her arrest of development along lines of masculine inherence no more proves her inferior to the male than does the human developmental arrest along lines of that tail our ape-progenitor possessed, prove the human inferior to the ape-species.
This arrest of tail-development occurred first in the female, doubtless; being one of those evolutionary mutations in the direction of advance of Type which are engendered in her s.e.x; and which are characterised by a conversion to higher potential, of differentiations in respect of adaptation to environment that have been achieved in the male.
Conversion of male Fitness to female Unfitness, therefore.
Seeing that the ape is vastly more adapted than is man to natural environment, it is obvious that the trend of adaptation to environment, far from having been along lines of evolving ape to man, must have been always, on the contrary, impelling reversion of the human to the ape-type. Darwin relates how he and Huxley, watching some boys bathing, "marvelled over the fact, seeming especially strange when they are no longer disguised by clothes, that human beings should dominate over all other creatures and play the wonderful part they do on earth."
Hugo de Vries says: "Natural Selection (whereof Adaptation is _modus operandi_) ... does not single out the best variations, but simply destroys the larger number of those which are, from some cause or other, unfit for their present environment. In this way it keeps the strains up to the required standard."
While Hoffding states explicitly: "Adaptation and Progress are not the same."
Clearly there are Dual Principles operating in progressive development; one adapting the organism to environment, the other adapting it to the Typal model inherent in species.
II
In the male of stock impoverished by artificial conditions of civilisation, the transition to manhood is attended likewise by some languors, physical and mental. New powers are being developed and occasion more or less strain upon the const.i.tution--a strain wherewith our present-day masters and pastors, in their zeal of intensive culture, reckon far too little. In healthy boys this is in no way comparable, however, with the const.i.tutional stress which adolescence causes in healthy girls. The youth continues to wax in strength of brain and body.
The arrest, or involution, normal to the girl, does not occur in him.
While she becomes gentler and more tranquil, by reason of a new poise in her of mind and body, he becomes forceful and restless by reason of a new release in him of energy. Yet though he gains in strength of brain and body by this further differentiation of his resources into concrete faculty and virile energy, he lapses notably in organisation. From the supple, fine-skinned boy--clear-eyed, sweet-voiced, womanly almost in refinement and comeliness--he grows large and hard and muscular; more or less sinewy and rough-hewn, according as he is, or is not, manly of type. His skin loses its fine grain and smoothness, becoming coa.r.s.er and hirsute; thus reverting, in degree, to the inferior, animal grade of skin. His voice falls nearly an octave, lapsing from sweetness and purity to gruffness and volume. Obviously--although all this being normal, the male has a virile charm and handsomeness of his own--man"s is notably a less highly and subtly-evolved organisation than is woman"s.
In the boy, is seen a progressive adaptation of body and brain to environment, in order to fit him for his man"s task of coping with and advancing the conditions of life, material and ethical. And for this, the more delicate and sensitive woman-physique, demanding more of vital conservation for its upkeep, would be a handicap.
Biological adaptation for his part in reproduction occurs too. But the male development at this epoch is pre-eminently one of adaptation to environment; equipping him with bone and muscle, brain and enterprise, aggressiveness, initiative and energy. Racially indispensable as the reproductive function is in him, it is obviously incidental and subordinate to his general development.
The girl"s transition to womanhood is seen, on the contrary, to be one almost entirely of adaptation, physiological and psychical, to the functions of wifehood and child-bearing. Her growth ceases. She loses, in place of gaining, nerve and muscle-power. While, in becoming emotional, her changed mentality unfits far more than it fits her to cope with life at first hand; with life unadapted, that is, and herself unshielded by the male. Her intelligence at eighteen is normally less keen and active--although of higher and more subtle quality and trend--than it had been at twelve.
Indications of Nature which point unmistakably to diametrically different modes of culture and of training for the s.e.xes, and, in consequence, to wholly different applications of their respective powers and apt.i.tudes in every department of life.
In the boy, the Male-traits receive, with adolescence, a great influx of energy; wholly dominating the Woman-traits which had made him more or less a feminine creature.
More and more each day, the potential virile in his every cell a.s.serts itself in structure and in function; dominating the Woman-traits inherent in him. He waxes big and strong of body; restless and active of mentality. And the less, within normal limits, virility has been prematurely forced in him by too hard strain of mind or body, the better for the evolution of his manhood. Unless the Woman-traits have been unduly drilled and hardened out of him, they will now refine, inspire and fructify his awakening masculine powers. The too hard struggle for existence put, by necessity, on boys of the poorer cla.s.ses, and, in the higher cla.s.ses, forced on sensitive boys called upon, too young, to fight for survival in the semi-savage communities that public schools are, hardens them too soon and too summarily, and thus frustrates their best development.
It is said that there is no atrocity a boy-community will not commit.
In this stage of development, the moral consciousness of the _genus_ is at low ebb. The accentuation of Male-traits now occurring occasions a recrudescence of primal instincts. And the collective atmosphere such recrudescence engenders in a boy-community, marooned in school-life apart from the refining, softening influences of home and womenkind, is only too often an evil and a demoralising one. Boarding-schools should be abolished; good day-schools subst.i.tuted.
More than at any other phase of his existence, the masculine needs now the Woman-influences from _without_; because the Woman-traits _within_ are, for a period, submerged beneath a surge of Maleness.
Notwithstanding these obvious truths, however, during the years when body and mind should be adapting gradually, consciously and subconsciously, to the social environment wherein their lives are to be pa.s.sed; when the mental horizon should be expanding simultaneously with the expanding intelligence, when the moral should be rising to the new demands upon it, boys are imprisoned in scholastic inst.i.tutions, where they are hemmed in by routine and restrictions, in an atmosphere of puerile conceptions, puerile traditions, puerile conventions and a.s.sociations; their chief outlet and respite the narrow rules and the narrowing absorptions of so-called "Games," supervised by martinet Games-masters.
And then, when we bring them to the field of life, we are surprised to find many of them unintelligent, unadapted, unadaptable; resourceless, inept and incompetent. Cooped during those impressionable years in a wholly artificial environment, when confronted by the world of living actualities, which is not ruled by similar narrow restrictions, nor shaped upon the artificial forms and puerile misconceptions in which their young ductile natures have been run and have set--they show themselves wholly unfitted for life, with its varied, difficult and complex conditions and adjustments. They have become, in point of fact, mentally and temperamentally "provincial."
The good form which some of them acquire is derived less from school-ethics or training than from an aristocratic strain of boys with whom they have been a.s.sociated. And being acquired, when it is not the form of their own social order, it appears only too frequently as a counterfeit; engendering insincerity and sn.o.bbishness, and marring individuality.
It has seemed to me that, in both s.e.xes, the first seven years of life--during which native faculty and attribute are evolving at great pace--are a phase in which the Recessive, or anabolic, mode, conservative of the resources and vitalising of the tissues, is in the ascendant. The true child of both s.e.xes is normally, during these years, a typification of the Woman-traits; receptive, plastic, gentle, affectionate, trustful, intuitive, emotional; quickly fatigued, quickly recuperative; more or less lovely and angelic. In this phase, native intuitive faculty makes children sometimes phenomenal; lightning calculators, musical prodigies, precocious poets, artists. So too, their marvellously rapid apprehension of the complex meanings and implications of life betokens Supra-conscious mentality.
At seven years old and thence onward to fourteen, a male, and katabolic, phase sets in. Phenomenal faculty vanishes. Concrete development of body, brain and energy proceeds apace. The child becomes active, intelligent, enterprising, inquiring. The boy becomes appreciably male; the girl more or less of a hoyden, more male, indeed, than she is normally at any other period of her existence. Unless, that is, this hoyden phase is rendered permanent in her by masculine training.
At fourteen, with the evolution of s.e.x, the s.e.x of boy and girl, with its respective opposite modes of const.i.tution and of function, makes for marked development, each along its characteristic lines.
III
The French have a saying: _La femme est une malade_. Woman is not, of course, an invalid. Nature does not fashion invalids. Woman"s organisation is normally delicate and sensitive and highly strung, because of its special and complex s.e.x-differentiation. She resembles the child, in that howsoever healthful (in proportion, indeed, as she is normal and healthfully organised) her cells of brain and body re-act resiliently and vitally to all the agencies, physical and psychical, about her.
This sensitive re-activity is not only a sign, it is, as well, a _source_ of health. Because the greater delicacy and sensitiveness of organisation which characterise women and children, resulting in their quick re-activity to deleterious conditions, secure a permanently more highly-vitalised condition of body than is the case with man, whose cells are less sensitive, more tolerant of fatigue, of cold, and of other injurious agents. Immunity against injurious factors is the parent of degeneracy. Life being re-activity, in terms of living processes, to the factors of environment, such immunity entails loss of vital re-activity to _vivifying_ as much as against deteriorative factors.