It may be that here we are on the track of an essential difference between men and women in the distribution of energy. If fatherhood is a more casual relationship and uses up less time and energy than motherhood, it looks as if the specifically sexual life of men does not require such a jealously guarded reserve of energy as that of women. This would be true of all men and all women, for such a fundamental process as the propagation of the human race could not be left to a section of humanity. As far as the race is concerned, all women are potential mothers, and must have the necessary reserve of energy for this function whether they intend to become mothers or not. They cannot waste it even if they would. Thus men have more energy to waste on their own individual purposes than women: that is to say, men have more energy at their conscious disposal. III The implications of this hypothesis must be considered. It is attractive because it establishes an essential difference between men and women which makes them complementary to each other. There can be no question of absolute domination of one sex by the other when the strength of each lies in a different direction. If man’s energy is diverted more into conscious life, woman’s energy is diverted more into unconscious life, and one is not more important than the other. It is a relative, not an absolute difference; both men and women are human beings, and all that concerns human beings is their joint affair. But it means, as will be seen, a difference in the kind of creative work done by each: they will tackle the same things from a different point of view, and with different results. On this basis men and women would each have an equal right, the right of the creative spirit to do its work without let or hindrance. Conscious life implies rational thinking. In thinking about things we arrange them in patterns, we give them form and system. But we do not give them content; conscious life modifies or seizes upon things which it does not originate. Growth is a process which is already well advanced before it enters consciousness at all. Our patterns of thought, therefore, can never be final: they must from time to time be broken and re-formed to admit new factors pushed into consciousness. But the existence of thought-patterns makes it easier to recognise the significance of new factors, since a thought, once formulated, can be passed on, and becomes a permanent heritage for the human race, part of the body of knowledge established by the processes of consciousness. These processes are continuously at work extending the body of knowledge, systematising thought, and endeavouring to systematise life. Consciousness is thus the shaper of form, which is one aspect of life, and its work tends to a permanence beyond the vicissitudes of living. But its vitality depends upon its communion with the unconscious.