In The Evolution of Sex, by Geddes and Thomson, is the following:
In phraseology which will presently become more intelligible and concrete, the males live at a loss, are more katabolic,—disruptive changes tending to preponderate in the sum of changes in their living matter or protoplasm. The females, on the other hand, live at a profit, are more anabolic,—constructive processes predominating in their life, whence indeed the capacity of bearing offspring.[33]
Among the lower orders of animals, there appears an excess of males, and among the higher forms of life, man included, the fact that the male is the result of the cruder, less developed germ, has been clearly shown, not alone by the facts brought forward by Mr. Darwin, but by those enunciated by all reliable writers on this subject. As a result of the excessive eagerness in males, and the consequent expenditure of vital force among the lower orders of life to find the female and secure her favours, they are generally smaller in size, with a higher body temperature and shorter life. Among the higher orders, the human species, for instance, although man is larger than woman, he is still shorter lived, has less endurance, is more predisposed to organic diseases, and is more given to reversion to former types, facts which show that his greater size is not the result of higher development. It is noted that the liability to assume characters proper to lower orders belongs in a marked degree to males of all the higher species—man included.
Doubtless man’s greater size (a modification which has been acquired through Sexual Selection) has been of considerable value to him in the struggle for existence to which he has been subjected, but the indications are already strong that after a certain stage of progress has been reached, even this modification of structure will prove useless, if not an actual hindrance to him. On mechanical principles, every increase of size requires more than a corresponding increase of strength and endurance to balance the activities and carry on the vital processes, yet such have been the conditions of man’s development, that his excess of strength does not compensate for his greater size and weight, while his powers of endurance fall below those of women.
Although the conditions of the past have required a vast expenditure of physical energy, the activities of the future will make no such demand. Nature’s forces directed by the human will and intellect are already lessening the necessity for an excessive outlay of bodily strength. It may be truly said that electricity and the innumerable mechanical devices now in use have well nigh supplanted the necessity for great physical exertion. Even war, should it be continued, which is not likely, will be conducted without it. Destructive weapons based upon high-power explosives require little physical effort for their manipulation. The pugilist represents the departing glory of male physical strength.
We are informed by Mr. Darwin that by a vast number of measurements taken of various parts of the human body in different races, during his Novara Expedition, it was found that the men in almost every case presented a greater range of variations than women, and, as Mr. Wood has carefully attended to the variations of the muscles of man, Mr. Darwin quotes from him that “the greatest number of abnormalities in each subject is found in males.” He adduces also the testimony of several others who have practically investigated this subject, all of whom agree in their statements that variations in the muscles are more frequent in males than in females. These variations usually consist in a reversion to lower types—a reversion in which muscles proper to lower forms of life make their appearance.
In an examination of forty male subjects, there was in nineteen of them a rudimentary muscle found which is designated as the ischio-pubic, and in three others of the forty was observed a ligament which represents this muscle; but, in an examination by the same person of thirty female subjects, in only two of them was this muscle developed on both sides, whilst in three others the rudimentary ligament was present. Thus while we observe that about fifty-five per cent. of the males examined were possessed of muscles proper to lower orders, in only about seventeen per cent. of the females under observation did this reversion appear. In a single male subject, seven muscular variations proper to apes were indicated.
Numberless cases might be cited in which reversions and abnormalities have been developed only in the male line. Of the porcupine men of the Lambert family who lived in London last century, Haeckel says:
Edward Lambert, born in 1717, was remarkable for a most unusual and monstrous formation of the skin. His whole body was covered with a horny substance, about an inch thick, which rose in the form of numerous thorn-shaped and scale-like processes, more than an inch long. This monstrous formation on the outer skin, or epidermis, was transmitted by Lambert to his sons and grandsons, but not to his granddaughters.[34]
According to the testimony of those who have made a study of the various abnormalities in the human organism, the ears of men present a greater range of variations than do those of women, and the cases in which supernumerary digits appear in males are as two to one, compared with females presenting the same structural defect. Of one hundred and fifty-two cases of this kind tabulated by Burt Wilder, eighty-six were males and thirty-nine females, the sex of the remaining twenty-seven being unknown. Mr. Darwin wishes us to remember, however, that “women would more frequently endeavour to conceal a deformity of this kind than men.” Although it is quite natural for women to abhor abnormalities and deformities, it is to be doubted if they would succeed for any considerable length of time in concealing the deformity of an organ which, like the hand, is usually uncovered, and which in waking hours, is in almost constant use.