Feminism; Women; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
It may be considered therefore that Type, or Species, evolves to higher
inherences by way of progressive divergences of Sex-characteristics.
While the Evolution of the individual progresses in every generation in
proportion as parents of both sexes had mated, in the previous
generation, with such members of the opposite sex as were best fitted to
supply, in the gametes contributed to offspring, complements which, by
union with their own, so matched and supplemented their own as to have
quickened and energised the development of offspring to the fullest and
the most efficient issues. In any line, however, a strain of greatness
or of other inherence descends in alternating succession, now in the
female, now in the male line; receding now into the potential, and then
evolving in development. So that while the Individual normally evolves
in every generation, the Type evolves only in alternate generations.
The evolution of Type, or Species, is the intrinsic function of the
spontaneous Evolution of Life into two orders of Sex. It occurs on a
wholly different plane from that of the evolution of the Individual. But
by way of his, or her, complement to the biological constitution of
offspring, members of both sexes contribute alike to the evolution of
_Species_ and to that of the _Individual_--according as such complement
enhances the power of the traits of the opposite Sex to manifest, and
further to evolve in offspring.
The intensification in the one sex of its own inherences stimulates a
proportional intensification of the opposite inherences in the other
Sex, both as regards the evolution of the Type and of the Individual.
The phenomenon would seem to be akin to that increase of one electrical
potential evoking a proportional increase of the other electrical
potential, to complement it. When one sex fails to supply its due
potential, or complement, to the other, the evolution both of Type and
Individual receives a check.
And because the evolution of Type is achieved by the Germ-plasm derived
from a parent of one sex obtaining new increment from being invested in
the organisation of offspring of the opposite sex, it is not until the
new Typal-inherence of this Germ-plasm is revivified again in the
organisation of a member of the Sex from which the plasm was derived,
that such new impulse manifests. Hence the phenomenon of characteristics
being transmitted from parents to offspring of opposite sex. So that
daughters of normal womanly organisation reproduce the Typal
characteristics of their fathers' maternal line; while in sons of normal
male organisation those of their mothers' paternal line emerge.
Hence too, the reversion of offspring of hybrid plants to the
types,--pure Dominant and pure Recessive--of their grandparents.
IV
_Progressive segregation of Male and Female traits in opposite
sides of body ever further intensifies and differentiates their
intrinsic qualities_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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