CHAPTER IV[ToC]
THE EARLY RELATIONSHIP OF THE SEXES
"Great effects are everywhere produced in animated Nature, by minute causes.... Think of how many curious phenomena sexual relation gives rise to in animal life; think of the results of love in human life; now all this had for its raison d'être the union of two cellules.... There is no organic act which approaches this one in power and force of differentiation."—Haeckel.
What is the practical outcome to us of this early relation of the sexes in Nature's scheme?
In attempting to answer this question it will be necessary to take an apparently circuitous route, going back over some of the ground that already has been covered; to examine in further detail the process of sexual love as it presents itself among our pre-human ancestors. It is well worth while to do this. If we can find in this way an answer, we shall come very near to solving many of the most difficult of woman's problems. At the same time we shall have made clear how deep-rooted are the foundations of those passions of sex which agitate the human heart, and are still the most powerful force amongst us to-day.
In the light of the facts I have briefly summarised, we have been able in the former chapters to indicate how sexuality began, with the male element developed from the primary female organism, his sole function being her impregnation; how this was seized upon and continued through the advantage gained by the mixing of the two germ-plasms, which, on the whole, resembling one another somewhat closely, yet differ in details, and thus introduce new opportunities of progress into the life-elements; and how, in this way, differentiation of function between the male and the female was set up. We saw, further, how the development of the male, at first often living parasitically upon the female, continued; but how, under certain conditions of life, such parasitism was transferred to the female, so that it is she who is sacrificed to the sex function; and, lastly, taking the extreme cases of the bee-hive and the spider, we suggested certain warnings to be drawn from these early parasitic relations between the sexes. It is necessary now to penetrate deeper; to trace more fully the evolution of the sexual passion, which, from this line of thought, may be said to be the process which carried on the development and modification of the male, creating him—as surely we may believe—by the love-choice of the female. To do this we have once more to return to the consideration, under a somewhat new aspect, of the relative position of the female and the male in their love-courtships in some examples among the humbler types of animal life. After these have been considered, not only in themselves, but in the relation they bear to the higher forms which developed from them, we shall be in a surer position to re-ascend the ladder of life. We shall come to understand the biological significance of love—something of the complexity and beauty and force of the passions that we have inherited. We shall find also the causes, so important to us, which led to the reversal of the early superiority of the female in size and often in function, replacing it by the superiority of the male. Then, and then only, shall we be ready to approach the difficult problems of the sexual differences which have persisted, separating women from men among human races, and to estimate if these differences are to be considered as belonging essentially to the female and the male, or whether they have arisen through special environmental causes.
If we look back anew to the very start of sexuality, where two cells flow together, thereby to continue life, we find the very simplest expression of the sex-appetite. There is what may be called instinctive physical attraction, and the whole process is very much a satisfaction of protoplasmic hunger.[39] Now it was, of course, a long step from this incipient cell-union to the varied function of sex in animal life, and it was a long process from these to the yet more complex manifestation of the love-passion among men. But in reality the source of all love is the same; throughout the entire relations of the sexes we find this cell-hunger instinct; in every case, it matters not how fine and ennobling the love may be, the single, original, impelling motive is the union of two cells—the male element and the female driven to seek one another to continue life. I find it necessary to insist on this physical basis of all love. Women are so apt to go astray. It is one of the vicious tendencies of the female mind to think that the needs of sex are something to be resisted. Let us face the truth that this great force of love has its roots fastened in cell-hunger, and it dies when its roots are cut away.
It is evident that at first this sex-appetite cannot have been purposive, but acted subconsciously by a kind of interaction between the want of the organism and its power of function. Even in many complex multicellular organisms the liberation of the sex-elements continues very passive; and although the differentiation of the sexual-cells is already complete in plants and animals comparatively low in the scale, it at first makes little difference in the development of the other parts of the individual. Among many lower animals, and most plants, each individual develops within itself both kinds of cells—that is, female and male. This union of the two sex functions in one organism is known as hermaphroditism. There is little doubt that it was once common to all organisms, an intermediate stage in the sex-progress, after the differentiation of the sexes had been accomplished.