Feminism; Women; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
Seeing that the ape is vastly more adapted than is man to natural
environment, it is obvious that the trend of adaptation to environment,
far from having been along lines of evolving ape to man, must have been
always, on the contrary, impelling reversion of the human to the
ape-type. Darwin relates how he and Huxley, watching some boys bathing,
"marvelled over the fact, seeming especially strange when they are no
longer disguised by clothes, that human beings should dominate over all
other creatures and play the wonderful part they do on earth."
Hugo de Vries says: "Natural Selection (whereof Adaptation is _modus
operandi_) ... does not single out the best variations, but simply
destroys the larger number of those which are, from some cause or other,
unfit for their present environment. In this way it keeps the strains up
to the required standard."
While Hoffding states explicitly: "Adaptation and Progress are not the
same."
Clearly there are Dual Principles operating in progressive development;
one adapting the organism to environment, the other adapting it to the
Typal model inherent in species.
II
In the male of stock impoverished by artificial conditions of
civilisation, the transition to manhood is attended likewise by some
languors, physical and mental. New powers are being developed and
occasion more or less strain upon the constitution--a strain wherewith
our present-day masters and pastors, in their zeal of intensive culture,
reckon far too little. In healthy boys this is in no way comparable,
however, with the constitutional stress which adolescence causes in
healthy girls. The youth continues to wax in strength of brain and body.
The arrest, or involution, normal to the girl, does not occur in him.
While she becomes gentler and more tranquil, by reason of a new poise in
her of mind and body, he becomes forceful and restless by reason of a
new release in him of energy. Yet though he gains in strength of brain
and body by this further differentiation of his resources into concrete
faculty and virile energy, he lapses notably in organisation. From the
supple, fine-skinned boy--clear-eyed, sweet-voiced, womanly almost in
refinement and comeliness--he grows large and hard and muscular; more or
less sinewy and rough-hewn, according as he is, or is not, manly of
type. His skin loses its fine grain and smoothness, becoming coarser and
hirsute; thus reverting, in degree, to the inferior, animal grade of
skin. His voice falls nearly an octave, lapsing from sweetness and
purity to gruffness and volume. Obviously--although all this being
normal, the male has a virile charm and handsomeness of his own--man's
is notably a less highly and subtly-evolved organisation than is
woman's.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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