Half Hours With Modern Scientists: Lectures and Essays

by Thomas Henry Huxley; George F. Barker; E. D. Cope; James Hutchison Stirling; John Tyndall

The gentler sex is characterized by a greater impressibility, often seen in the influence exercised by a stronger character, as well as by music, color or spectacle generally; warmth of emotion, submission to its influence rather than that of logic; timidity and irregularity of action in the outer world. All these qualities belong to the male sex, as a general rule, at some period of life, though different individuals lose them at very various periods. Ruggedness and sternness may rarely be developed in infancy, yet at some still prior time they certainly do not exist in any.

Probably most men can recollect some early period of their lives when the emotional nature predominated—a time when emotion at the sight of suffering was more easily stirred than in maturer years. I do not now allude to the benevolence inspired, kept alive or developed by the influence of the Christian religion on the heart, but rather to that which belongs to the natural man. Perhaps all men can recall a period of youth when they were hero-worshipers—when they felt the need of a stronger arm, and loved to look up to the powerful friend who could sympathize with and aid them. This is the “woman stage” of character: in a large number of cases it is early passed; in some it lasts longer; while in a very few men it persists through life. Severe discipline and labor are unfavorable to its persistence. Luxury preserves its bad qualities without its good, while Christianity preserves its good elements without its bad.

It is not designed to say that woman in her emotional nature does not differ from the undeveloped man. On the contrary, though she does not differ in kind, she differs greatly in degree, for her qualities grow with her growth, and exceed in power many fold those exhibited by her companion at the original point of departure. Hence, since it might be said that man is the undeveloped woman, a word of explanation will be useful. Embryonic types abound in the fields of nature, but they are not therefore immature in the usual sense. Maintaining the lower essential quality, they yet exhibit the usual results of growth in individual characters; that is, increase of strength, powers of support and protection, size and beauty. In order to maintain that the masculine character coincides with that of the undeveloped woman, it would be necessary to show that the latter during her infancy possesses the male characters predominating—that is, unimpressibility, judgment, physical courage, and the like.

If we look at the second class of female characters—namely, those which are imperfectly developed or absent in men, and in respect to which man may be called undeveloped woman—we note three prominent points: facility in language, tact or finesse, and the love of children. The first two appear to me to be altogether developed results of “impressibility,” already considered as an indication of immaturity. Imagination is also a quality of impressibility, and, associated with finesse, is apt to degenerate into duplicity and untruthfulness.

The third quality is different. It generally appears at a very early period of life. Who does not know how soon the little girl selects the doll, and the boy the toy-horse or machine? Here man truly never gets beyond undeveloped woman. Nevertheless, “impressibility” seems to have a great deal to do with this quality also.

Thus the metaphysical relation of the sexes would appear to be one of inexact parallelism, as defined in Sect. I. That the physical relation is a remote one of the same kind, several characters seem to point out. The case of the vocal organs will suffice. Their structure is identical in both sexes in early youth, and both produce nearly similar sounds. They remain in this condition in the woman, while they undergo a metamorphosis and change both in structure and vocal power in the man. In the same way, in many of the lower creation, the females possess a majority of embryonic features, though not invariably. A common example is to be found in the plumage of birds, where the females and young males are often undistinguishable.[^[48]] But there are few points in the physical structure of man also in which the male condition is the immature one. In regard to structure, the point at which the relation between the sexes is that of exact parallelism, or where the mature condition of the one sex accords with the undeveloped condition of the other, is when reproduction is no longer accomplished by budding or gemmation, but requires distinct organs. Metaphysically, this relation is to be found where distinct individuality of the sexes first appears; that is, where we pass from the hermaphrodite to the bisexual condition.

[48]. Meehan states that the upper limbs and strong laterals in coniferæ and other trees produce female flowers and cones, and the lower and more interior branches the male flowers. What he points out is in harmony with the position here maintained—namely, that the female characters include more of those which are embryonic in the males, than the male characters include of those which are embryonic in the female: the female flowers are the product of the younger and more growing portions of the tree—that is, those last produced (the upper limbs and new branches)—while the male flowers are produced by the older or more mature portions—that is, lower limbs or more axial regions.

Meehan’s observations coincide with those of Thury and others on the origin of sexes in animals and plants, which it appears to admit of a similar explanation.

But let us put the whole interpretation on this partial undevelopment of woman.

The types or conditions of organic life which have been the most prominent in the world’s history—the Ganoids of the first, the Dinosaurs of the second, and the Mammoths of the third period—have generally died with their day. The line of succession has not been from them. The law of anatomy and paleontology is, that we must seek the point of departure of the type which is to predominate in the future, at lower stages on the line, in less decided forms, or in what, in scientific parlance, are called generalized types. In the same way, though the adults of the tailless apes are in a physical sense more highly developed than their young, yet the latter far more closely resemble the human species in their large facial angle and shortened jaws.