During the past five thousand years, woman’s reproductive functions have been turned into means of subsistence, and under the peculiar circumstances of her environment, her “struggle for existence” has involved physical processes far more disastrous to life and health than are those to which man has been subjected. Owing to the peculiar condition of woman’s environment, there has been developed within her more delicate and sensitive organism an alarming degree of functional nervousness; yet, with the gradual broadening of her sphere of activity, and the greater exercise of personal rights, this tendency to nervous derangement is gradually becoming lessened. That there is reserve force in woman sufficient to overcome the evil results of the supremacy of the animal instincts during the last five thousand or six thousand years of human existence, from present indications seems more than likely. Commenting on the subject of nervousness, and the degree in which it is manifested in civilized countries, and especially among civilized women, Dr. Beard says: Women, with all their nervousness—and, in civilized lands, women are more nervous, immeasurably, than men, and suffer more from general and special nervous diseases—yet live quite as long as men, if not somewhat longer; their greater nervousness and far greater liability to functional diseases of the nervous system being compensated for by their smaller liability to acute and inflammatory disorders, and various organic nervous diseases, likewise, such as the general paralysis of insanity.[39] [39] _American Nervousness_, p. 207. According to Maudsley women “seldom suffer from general paralysis.” This disease is frequently inherited, and is sometimes the result of alcoholic and other excesses.[40] [40] Maudsley, _Physiology and Pathology of the Mind_, p. 360. Regarding the dangers to which women are exposed by excessive and useless maternity, Dr. Beard remarks: The large number of cases of laceration at childbirth and the prolonged and sometimes even life-enduring illness resulting from them, are good reasons for the terror which the processes of parturition inspires in the minds of American women today. However, that the dangers incident to parturition, and the excessive nervousness which characterizes civilized women, are not necessary adjuncts of civilization, but, on the contrary, are a result of the unchecked disruptive forces developed in man, and the consequent drain on the vital energies of woman, will be seen, so soon as through the cultivation of the higher faculties developed in and transmitted through females, the lower nature of males has finally been brought within its legitimate bounds. CHAPTER IV THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS AND THE MORAL SENSE