The tigress is only less fierce, less strong, and less savage than the tiger. Primal woman was only less fierce, less strong, and less savage than the male. It is only, indeed, in the maternal function and relation that the female traits of both tigress and primal woman awake, and find justification, impulse, and scope for development. And while the material progress which has led to modern Civilisation resulted from Adaptation to, and of, environment, and derived its impulse from the male proclivities of strength, assertiveness and intelligence, the moral progress thereof may be said to have derived its impulse from the evolution of the female sex-characteristics. Because the evolution of Woman-traits has meant the ever further tempering and counterpoising of the fiercely active and aggressive male propensities, by the more passive and self-surrendering qualities of the female. Judging the respective characteristics of the sexes by their widely-differing rôles in the most important of their co-operative living functions, the parental one--the sole function wherein the sexes of lower organisation co-operate, indeed--the respective attributes of Dominance and Recessiveness manifest clearly in these. The province of the male being to fight for mate and young, providing food, defending life--in order to fit him for this struggle for racial survival, his traits of strength and stature remain long paramount, alike in development and function, over those of the female, as regards his own organisation and that of his offspring, both male and female. The province of the female being to surrender her powers to the nurture of offspring before birth, and, after birth, mildly to suckle and to tend its helplessness, Nature equips her to these ends; inhibiting, or negativing, strength and fierceness in her by the traits of Recessiveness.