Life in Nature is a continuous process of inter-racial and intra-racial struggles for power and supremacy, with no principle, except the one of “more life” in each race or species, governing the whole. Every species behaves as if it alone had the right to exist on earth, irrespective of all other claims. The fact that there are more species of parasites than of any other kind of organism shows that this universal process of rapine and deception is pursued without any natural exercise of favour for what, from the human standpoint, can be called desirability. The parasite kills the human genius just as readily as it kills the cow, and the locusts devour the food which is the only sustenance of the ewe and her lamb. Without scruple, and without favour, Nature’s one cry is “Life!” and evermore “Life!” and whether the success of the struggle falls to what we should call the “nobler” species, or to the “inferior,” is a matter of utter indifference to her. When men like Weininger, Lombroso, Havelock Ellis, and many others, inveigh against Nature turned woman, and see the same unscrupulousness concentrated on one form of survival—human survival—the fact that they do not trace this characteristic to a positive and vital source makes their moral condemnation of women worthless and unworthy of a scientific thinker.[187] In woman I recognize some of the principal virtues that make for a continuance of the human species on earth: (1) Unreflecting constancy to the demands of Life;[188] (2) Untiring interest in the processes of Life and its multiplication (which in its minor ramifications lead to that intense concern about all human affairs, which, in opprobrious language, is called “a love of scandal-mongering”); (3) A capacity for desperate bravery in defending or succouring human life; (4) A capacity for single-minded devotion to her own offspring (which in its minor ramifications often manifests itself in the virgin, and in the spinster of all ages, as a single-minded devotion to a purpose, to an idea, or to a cause); (5) A capacity for bodily purity, or chastity, which in the more passionate type of woman is based upon an instinct to withhold herself until her heart and her affections are captured (this in its spiritual ramifications leads to intellectual obstinacy, conservatism, or fanaticism. Thus a woman’s citadel of opinions, like her bodily citadel, is only liable to capitulation when her heart and her affections are engaged).