The relation of the male man to his environment involves the usual struggle for existence more or less active. His _pièce de resistance_ is the mineral and vegetable world and its atmosphere, and his antagonist is his fellow man. The former generally yields more or less abundantly to his solicitations. What he gets from his fellow man is acquired through the necessities of the latter, and the benefit may be mutual, or it may be all on one side. His best friend may unconsciously and unintentionally, in the regular order of trade, reduce him to beggary, or compel him, as an alternative, to emigrate to a distant land. Such results are more frequent as population increases. To maintain himself against the destructive forces of nature, such as cold, heat, rains, tempests, fires, blights, etc., is his necessary occupation. If he pursue a profession, or if he be in trade, he must supply the actual needs of his fellow man, and beware that competition and monopoly do not deprive him of all return for his labor. Woman, considered by herself, is subject to identical conditions. Her needs are the same and her environment is the same. But she is not so well endowed as man to supply the one or to meet the other. Her disabilities are of two kinds, physical and mental. The physical are: first, inferior muscular strength, and secondly, childbearing. The latter means more or less incompetence for active work at monthly periods, or several months of gestation and lactation, and some years of care of children. The mental disabilities are: first, inferior power of mental co-ordination; and secondly, greater emotional sensibility, which interferes more or less with rational action.[17] [17] This is, of course, only true where the sexes of the same subspecies or race are compared. From these facts it is evident that, were woman of the same sex as man, that is, were she simply another kind of man, she would soon be eliminated from the earth under the operation of the ordinary law of the survival of the fittest. This need not be through any agencies different from those now actually in operation among men under the circumstances of peaceful trade. And such is often the actual history of male men who possess marked feminine characteristics. It does not follow from this, that some women might not sustain themselves apart from men, in agriculture, trade, and the professions. This is especially possible where the struggle is not very severe; but in the cases which exist, few are really independent of male assistance, which has furnished the capital, either of cleared land, money, or as an appointing power. The general result, as above stated, is self-evident from the facts.