Clothed in the solemn, newly invented terms of psychoanalysis, a theory of sex is urged upon us which bases all our activities upon this one function. It is exalted as not only an imperative instinct, but as _the_ imperative instinct, no others being recognized save the demands of the stomach. Surely never was a more physical theory disguised in the technical verbiage of “psychology.” We should not too harshly blame the ingenious mind of man for thinking up a new theory to retain what the old ones no longer assured him; nor too severely criticize the subject class, so newly freed, for committing the same excesses, the same eager imitations of the previous master, which history shows in any recently enfranchised people. Just as women have imitated the drug-habits of men, without the faintest excuse or reason, merely to show that they can, so are they imitating men’s sex habits, in large measure. Those who go too far in such excesses will presumably die without issue, doing no permanent harm to the stock. This wild excitement over sex, as if it were a new discovery peculiar to our time, will be allayed by further knowledge. Even a little study of the common facts of nature has a cooling and heartening influence. The essential facts are these: That all living forms show the tendency to maintain and to reproduce themselves; that some, in differing degree, show tendencies to vary and to improve; that after an immense period of reproduction without it (showing that as the “life force” it was quite unnecessary) the distinction of sex appeared as a means to freer variation and improvement; that the male characteristics of intense desire for the female, personal display, and intermasculine combat, as well as the female’s instinct of selection, are visible contributions to the major purpose of improvement; that in the higher and later life-forms further and more rapid improvement has been made through the development in the female of new organs and functions for the benefit of the young; through her alone have come the upward steps of viviparous birth, the marsupial pouch, and that crowning advantage, the mammary glands; the female solely is responsible for the development of nature’s aristocracy, Order Mammalia. In the human species she adds to her previous contributions to racial progress the invention of our primitive industries, which were evolved by her in service to the young, and later carried out by men into the trades and crafts which support human life. In the developing care and nurture of her children she laid the foundation for those social functions of government, education, and coöperative industry which are so vitally important to social progress that we have called the family “the unit of the state.”