Primal physical development may be said, thus, to have derived its first impulse from those fierce and fighting male-proclivities which characterised it in the epoch of that early savage struggle with environment whence Species emerged. Only with further evolutionary progress, do the female traits manifest as personal characteristics, secure survival, and find increasing exercise and sway.
The tigress is only less fierce, less strong, and less savage than the tiger. Primal woman was only less fierce, less strong, and less savage than the male. It is only, indeed, in the maternal function and relation that the female traits of both tigress and primal woman awake, and find justification, impulse, and scope for development. And while the material progress which has led to modern Civilisation resulted from Adaptation to, and of, environment, and derived its impulse from the male proclivities of strength, assertiveness and intelligence, the moral progress thereof may be said to have derived its impulse from the evolution of the female sex-characteristics. Because the evolution of Woman-traits has meant the ever further tempering and counterpoising of the fiercely active and aggressive male propensities, by the more passive and self-surrendering qualities of the female.
Judging the respective characteristics of the sexes by their widely-differing rôles in the most important of their co-operative living functions, the parental one—the sole function wherein the sexes of lower organisation co-operate, indeed—the respective attributes of Dominance and Recessiveness manifest clearly in these. The province of the male being to fight for mate and young, providing food, defending life—in order to fit him for this struggle for racial survival, his traits of strength and stature remain long paramount, alike in development and function, over those of the female, as regards his own organisation and that of his offspring, both male and female. The province of the female being to surrender her powers to the nurture of offspring before birth, and, after birth, mildly to suckle and to tend its helplessness, Nature equips her to these ends; inhibiting, or negativing, strength and fierceness in her by the traits of Recessiveness.
Tigress or savage woman, her struggle with the rough conditions of primal existence is only less fierce and less strenuous than her mate's. It demands the positive male-qualities (which manifest first in stature, strength and pugnacity) only less in degree than does his, therefore. The negative female qualities which, manifesting first in passivity and surrender, detract from her fierceness and activity, would have made for extinction of species had they not been defended by those of her fighting mate, as too by the male-traits she herself had inherited from her fighting father. They could only evolve, accordingly, precisely in proportion as they were sheltered behind the male dominant powers. The tiger shelters his tigress only during her maternal phases, however. Her cubs brought forth, suckled, reared, and thrust into the jungle to fend for themselves, she must fight her own battles for food and existence. And her brief maternal phases being all too short for more than the scantest development of female traits—which derive their fullest impulse in their exercise as mother-traits—she remains a tigress merely, and produces tiger offspring merely, because only tigerishness secures survival in her domain of life and attribute.
With the further advance of progressing species, savage woman has evolved from savage brute to savage woman by way of such increasing shelter and protection by her Dominant mate as have permitted the slow and gradual evolution of the Recessive Woman-traits in her; and thereby the evolution of the Woman-sex. Her maternal phases and the unfitnesses of these become ever more prolonged and incapacitating; her offspring demands ever longer periods of suckling, devotion and care, as both she and it rise higher in the scale of organisation. Thus, Sex has evolved in the male by response to the ever-increasing claims upon him, by the female and by offspring, of his traits of protective chivalry and intelligent effort. And Sex has evolved in the female by response to the ever-increasing claims by offspring upon her, of her traits of devotion and ministry.
The evolution of the Woman-attributes has been rendered possible only by that protection accorded by the male to the female as the due of her maternal unfitnesses; securing thus for her and for offspring a more privileged and kindlier environment. Environment which, evoking less of fight and physical stress, enabled her inherent milder, self-surrendering Recessive traits to emerge, to unfold, and to function increasingly in life and heredity.
And in the degree of her advancing evolution, the male evolved. Because, just as in her earlier hybrid constitution, the Dominant male-traits she had inherited from her father, submerging the Recessive female-traits she had inherited from her mother, made her, for long æons, more male than she was female, so now, with their progressive evolution, the Recessive female-traits not only made her ever more woman, but, transmitted in ever fuller measure to her sons, increasingly tempered, modified and humanised, the masculine fierceness and combativeness of these. Whereby were substituted arts of peace and civilisation for those of war.
Thus, with advancing Evolution, the female sex-characteristics have engendered, in both sexes, qualities of quietism and subordination, to temper those of force and aggression; amenities of gentleness, forbearance and affection, to soften assertiveness, turn the edge of strife, and fructify intelligence. Thus, human civilisation has been fostered and furthered.
In the hybrid creature that every man and woman is, are grouped two sets of Contrasting Traits, or Sex-characteristics: traits Dominant, or male, and traits Recessive, or female. And in the complex human hybrid, these traits, ever increasing in complexity of constitution and further diverging in trend, are associated in ever more close and complex poise and counterpoise as both become more intensified and intelligised.
Man is a hybrid in whom the male Dominant traits derived from his father prevail in impulse and development over the female Recessive traits derived from his mother. Woman is a hybrid in whom the maternal Recessive traits prevail in impulse and development over the male Dominant traits she has inherited from her father.