"Had Sex done nothing more than make an interesting world, the debt of Evolution to Reproduction had been incalculable.... What exactly Maleness is, and what Femaleness, has been one of the problems of the world. At least five hundred theories of their origin are already in the field, but the solution seems to have baffled every approach. Sex has remained almost to the present hour an ultimate mystery of creation.... "The contribution of each to the evolution of the human race is special and unique. To the man has been mainly assigned the fulfilment of the first great function--the Struggle for Life. Woman, whose higher contribution has not yet been named, is the chosen instrument for carrying on the Struggle for the Life of Others. "That task, translated into one great word is Maternity--which is nothing but the Struggle for the Life of Others transfigured, transferred to the moral sphere. Focused in a single human being, this function, as we rise in history, slowly begins to be accompanied by those heaven-born psychical states which transform the femaleness of the older order into the Motherhood of the New." Out of the misconception of Sex as having no other purpose or significance than that of reproduction merely, there has arisen the further misconception that, lacking other purpose or significance, the sex-characteristics of Woman may be obliterated in her not only without injury, but with benefit to her; as being superfluous and hampering impedimenta merely, when reproductive issues are beside the question. Yet since Faculty lapses first in its latest and highest developments, sex-deterioration manifests most in the higher mental and moral Sex-characteristics. One result, therefore, of not fostering, by culture and by avocation, sex-specialisations upon planes of mind and aptitude, is that, while lapsing in its higher functions, Sex remains operative still upon the physical plane, and functions crudely--perhaps viciously thereon. Just as intelligence becomes dense and degraded when its finer qualities are not exercised, and their development thus raised to finer issues. Moreover, by denying to Sex and to the rites of love any but parental issues, the individual, emotional and spiritual issues of the human union are ignored; a limitation all the more dishonouring, because of the present-day misconception of parenthood as being a purely "physical," and, accordingly, an inferior function. There is not, of course, in all the complex marvel of human metabolism, such an anomaly as a purely physical function. Digestion even is far, indeed, from being such, since by way of this a slice of bread is transformed into living personality, living thought and impulse, living action.