The differentiation of living creatures into two sexes, therefore, of bodies into two sides, of brains into two halves, and of Germ-Plasm into two reproductive glands, would seem to have had for object the ever further specialisation and segregation in the individual, for purposes alike of constitutional organisation and of the evolution of Faculty and Reproduction, of the two Orders of Contrasting Traits, which I have assumed to be Maleness and Femaleness, respectively.
From this view-point, the female Sex and Sex-traits are Recessive, or Potential, always, on the material plane, and manifest increasingly thereon only by way of ever more complex alliances with male-traits; which, being positive on the concrete plane, equip the female inherences for function thereon. Femaleness, or Recessiveness, on its side, however—being Life-Energy in the potential—is all the while engendering new potence for Dominance to transform into active, or functioning, power. While although negative, it is equally potent, on its side of the equation, to alter the values and manifestations of Dominance. Just as negative electricity inhibits the positive and destructive forces of positive electricity, although it does not, of itself, manifest directly.
The Dominant traits of Tallness and Strength, for example, are direct and positive factors in physical development. Dwarfness and Weakness are indirect and negative factors therein. Nevertheless, degrees of Dwarfness or of Weakness must proportionally reduce and modify the tallness of Tallness or the power of Strength.
But that Recessiveness is not a minus sign merely, as algebraically understood—but is an essential potence on another, and a psychical plane, is shown by the lesser height of woman rendering itself as a Grace; her lesser strength appearing in the new virtue of Gentleness.
That the female provides, for fertilisation, only a single sex-cell, from the reproductive gland of one or other side, while the male provides multiple and commingled cells from both sides, supports the view that sex-cells derived from one side are of opposite sex-inherence to those from the other side. Otherwise, why two reproductive glands?
The author of The Causation of Sex adduces evidence showing not only that the two glands are of opposite sex-inherence, but, moreover, that normally they function alternately; so that now a cell of one, now, of the other sex, is produced. It is likely, however, that function is seldom so mechanical, but that personal constitution or nurture modifies its operations.
That the male cells are multiple in number points to such a struggle of survival-fitness as ever characterises the more strenuous male destiny. Not, perhaps, the fittest as regards intrinsic superiority, but that most compatible with the requirements of the Queen-cell is selected for mate. Should the Queen-cell be of inferior standard, therefore, then (as happens in life) not the noblest of type, but that most adapted to environment secures racial survival.
So that here again, evolutionary racial advance may derive its impulse from the Female factor.
A singular phenomenon, recorded by the biologist, Rörig, and one which materially supports my argument, is that disease of the ovaries of a female deer will cause male antlers to develop in her. Proving a male organism concealed, or held Recessive, in her, by power of her female sex-organs normally to inhibit the development of her inherited male-traits. A strange feature of this abnormal occurrence is that disease of one ovary only causes antlers to develop on one side only—and this on the side opposite to that of the diseased gland.
On the other hand, castration of male sheep of the Merino breed (only the males of which are horned) occasions hornlessness.