[2] I have observed that lameness in women, by restricting physical activities and thus conserving vital energy, conduces to male offspring. The fact may well have been the origin of the Chinese custom of crippling the feet of female children. In my own professional practice, by prohibiting all strenuous and exhausting pursuits, intellectual, social or athletic, before and after marriage, I have succeeded in securing male offspring in patients whose stock had for generations given birth to girls only. In those _organically_ de-sexed by male pursuits, rest will not avail, of course.--_Author._ BOOK II WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN DECADENCE CHAPTER I DECLINE AND FALL OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS DUE TO FEMINISM "This is the function of our and every age, to grasp the knowledge already existing, to make it our own, and in so doing to develop it further and raise it to a higher level. In thus taking it to ourselves we make it different from what it was."--_Hegel._ I Ancient history is depressing study. It shows us peoples rising slowly and laboriously out of states of barbarism to high degrees of culture and enlightenment, and then, more or less suddenly, falling upon decline; lapsing to total extinction, even. One after another, we may watch them climb the Evolutionary Hill, then slacken pace and struggle on spasmodically. Till presently we find them steadily losing ground; slowly at first, but, gathering momentum, regressing more and more rapidly, until finally they are seen racing headlong to destruction. Of some among the proudest and the greatest Civilisations, so absolute has been their ultimate extinction that nothing more than ruined temples and some statuary remain to mark their quondam glory. Biologists tell us this is natural. Races, they say--like individuals--have only a certain life-tenure. They are born, develop, attain maturity, lapse to old age and then die; just as men do.