CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IV
Sexual differentiation as the primeval fact of human sexual life — Waldeyer on the significance of sexual differentiation — The biological law of Herbert Spencer — Antagonism between reproductive and developmental tendencies — Example of menstruation in illustration of this contrast — The primitiveness of woman, and her greater proximity to nature — Untenability of the notion of the “inferiority” of woman — Views upon the nature of her physical development — Increased differentiation of the sexes in consequence of civilization — Comparison between medieval and modern pictures of women — Obscuration of the sexual contrast in primitive times — Examples — Change of the voice in consequence of civilization — Return to primitive conditions in certain phenomena of the emancipation of woman (the adoption of a masculine style of clothing, tobacco-smoking) — Sexual indifference in the primitive history of mankind — Connexion therewith of a primordial gynecocracy (according to Ratzel) — Secondary sexual characters — Principal difference between the masculine and the feminine body — New researches on sexual differences — Skeletal differences — The specific sexual differences of the human pelvis — Their dependence upon civilization and upon development of the brain — Differences in body-size and body-weight — In muscular and fatty development — In the constitution of the blood — Sexual differences in the larynx and the voice — The skulls of men and women — The weight of the brain — No ground for the assumption of the inferiority of women — Differences in brain-structure — Researches of Rüdinger, Waldeyer, Broca, G. Retzius, etc. — Recognition of the fact that the feminine type is somewhat infantile — This type due to adaptation to the purposes of reproduction — Masculine and feminine beauty — Men and women different, but neither superior to the other.
CHAPTER IV
The difference between the sexes is the original cause of the human sexual life, the primeval preliminary of all human civilization. The existence of this difference can be proved, alike in physical and psychical relations, already in the fundamental phenomenon of human love, in which, because here the relations are simple and uncomplicated, it is most easily visible.
Waldeyer, in his notable address on the somatic differences between the sexes, delivered in 1895 at the Anthropological Congress in Kassel, drew attention to the fact that the higher development of any particular species is notably characterized by the increasing differentiation of the sexes. The further we advance in the animal and vegetable world from the lower to the higher forms, the more markedly are the male and the female individuals distinguished one from another. In the human species also, in the course of phylogenetic development, this sexual differentiation increases in extent.
In the development of these sexual differences, the antagonism first shown by Herbert Spencer to exist between reproduction and the higher evolutionary tendency plays an important part. Among the higher species of animals the males exhibit a stronger evolutionary tendency than the females, owing to the fact that their share in the work of reproduction has become less important. The more extensive organic expenditure demanded by the reproductive functions limits the feminine development to a notably greater extent than the masculine. In the human species this retardation of growth in the female is especially increased in consequence of menstruation, and this affords a striking example of the truth of Spencer’s law. I quote also in this connexion the remarks of the Würzburg anatomist Oskar Schultze, in his recently published valuable monograph on “Woman from an Anthropological Point of View,” pp. 55, 56 (Würzburg, 1906);
“The undulatory periodicity of the principal functions of the feminine organism, which depends on the processes of ovulation and menstruation, and is invariable in the females of the human species, does not occur in the other mammalia (with the exception of apes). In these latter, as far as we have been able to observe, the secondary sexual characters, in the matter of differences in muscular development and in strength, are not so developed, or sometimes are not so developed, as in the human species. We must in this connexion exclude the differences which appear in domestic animals as a result of domestication (for example, the difference between the cow and the bull). In the human female, the periodicity, which begins to act even on the youthful, still undeveloped body, has during thousands of years increased the secondary sexual differences. Periodicity is, in my opinion, an important cause of the fact that woman is inferior to man, more especially in the development of the muscular system and in strength, and that her organs, for the most part, are more closely approximated to the infantile type.
“The sexually mature body of a woman has always during the intermenstrual period to make good the loss undergone during menstruation. Hardly has this been effected and the climax of vital energy been once more attained, when a new follicle ruptures in the ovary, and the menstrual hæmorrhage recurs; thus continually, month after month, the vital undulation and the vital energy rises and falls. The energy periodically expended in woman’s principal function has for thousands of years ceased to be available for her own internal development. The actual loss on each occasion is so trifling that numerous women hardly find it disagreeable. The effect depends upon summation. The earnings are almost immediately spent, not for the purpose of her own domestic economy, but for the sake of another, in the service of reproduction; this comes first, for the species must be preserved. To accumulate capital for her personal needs has been rendered more difficult for woman than it is for man.”