But the tendency was based upon something far broader and deeper than changing social and economic conditions and religious feeling. Even the "mere man" must admit that it was biological and natural. "Nature," says Humboldt, "has taken woman under her special protection." She has always been partial to the female. Throughout the long period of mammalian evolution she has showed very little regard for the males. The more they fight and kill one another off, the fewer useless individuals to feed. The same tendency reaches its logical conclusion in the parthenogenesis of insects. Havelock Ellis says of woman: "She bears the special characteristics of humanity in a higher degree than man, and represents more nearly than man the human type which man is approximating." He boldly asserts that man seems to be the "weaker vessel," and brings strong arguments for his assertion.[171] "Das Ewig-weibliche Zieht uns hinan." The buried Pelasgic religion regained its rightful place. It had more vital reality than the Olympian. Has the great Roman Catholic Church, in its worship of the Virgin, retained at least the symbol of an element of vital reality which we Protestants, in our recoil from so-called "Mariolatry," have neglected to our cost in favor of a purely paternal conception of God? We leave this question to the theologians. CHAPTER XI PROGRESS It is a far cry and long and weary road from the ape descending from the trees and the ape-man shuffling over the ground, keeping close to his arboreal refuge, to the lake-dweller and builder of stone monuments. There was very little in the appearance or structure of the ape-man to encourage great hopes for the future. The sleek, graceful, wiry, well-armed cats were far more attractive, promising, and thrilling actors on the world's stage. Why did not they progress, win the future, and insure that all the future meetings of art and learning should be held on the back fence? They certainly did not progress--that is a stubborn fact. They had largely or completely exhausted the possibilities of their special line of development; as cats they were perfect and could dominate the portion of the world in which as cats they were solely interested. This was an impassable bar to progress. Why should they change? They were so thoroughly conformed to the environment of their time and conditions that any marked change would have been a disadvantage. But when conditions did change, and the fashion of the world which had produced them passed away, they became out of fashion, "back numbers," incapable of meeting new emergencies and crises--like men, parties, and governments in all ages of human history. They suffered from over-adaptation and the resulting limitations.