Two kinds of work had to be done. The men had to fight, dig, hunt, drain marshes and murder each other.
The women had to SUPPLY THE MEN to do all the working and fighting and killing.
Beasts, wars, fevers killed off the sons of women almost as fast as they could bear them. Women must supply the demand for soldiers and workers and at the same time a surplus big enough to populate the globe. Thus far she has put on earth fourteen hundred millions of her own kind. Quite an achievement, we should say, when the career of a Napoleon or an Alexander called for a couple of million of men extra, or a plague like the black death, due to man's stupid lack of cleanliness, wiped out two-thirds of Europe's people. ——
Men were the material workers—of course they exceeded in material achievement the women nursing babies at home.
But woman, caring for her children, sacrificing her life for them, developed on earth the moral sentiments, started each generation on its career a little better than its predecessor. She could not do all this and do the material things as well. In fact, she could not even THINK except on matters very near to her cradle, or her affections.
Remember that throughout the world's history it has been the lot of a vast majority of women to be constantly caring for young infants, or young children. Families of twenty children, or even more, have been common. It is probable that woman from the beginning of our racial existence until now has been the mother of from fifteen to twenty-five children on an average.
The dullest mind can see what that means.
Atrocious suffering. Endless worry about the children. Constant warfare against the man's selfish brutality.
How could woman rear her twenty children and at the same time do other work? How could she keep every thought, every effort of her brain on her offspring and develop her mind in other ways at the same time?
Give a man one young child to take care of FOR ONE DAY, and when you return to him you find a semi-imbecile, half-tearful creature.