of Nature's scheme; we are well prepared to support an exact opposite
view, with a knowledge founded on some at least of the facts that
prove this, by the actual position that women have held in the great
civilisations of the past and still hold among primitive peoples, as
well as by a sure biological basis. We are thus far advanced from the
uncertainty with which we started our inquiry; our investigation has
got beyond the statement of evidence drawn from the past to a stage
whence the status of woman in the social order to-day, and the meaning
of her relation to herself, to man, and to the race may be estimated.
The point we have reached is this: the primary value of the sexes has
to some extent, at least, been reversed under the patriarchal idea,
which has pushed the male destructive power into prominence at the
expense of the female constructive force. This under-valuing of the
one-half of life has lost to society the service of a strong
unsubjugated motherhood.

I am now, in this third and last section of my book, going to deal
with what seems to me the practical applications of the truth we have
arrived at. And the preliminary to this is a searching question: To
what extent must we accept a different natural capacity for women and
men? or, in other words, How far does the predominant sexual activity
of woman separate her from man in the sphere of intellectual and
social work? The whole subject is a large and difficult one and is
full of problems to which it is not easy to find an answer. We are
brought straight up against the old controversy of the organic
differences between the sexes. This must be faced before we can
proceed further.

To attempt to do this we must return to the position we left at the
end of the fifth chapter. We had then concluded from our examination
of the sexual habits of insects, mammals, and birds that a marked
differentiation between the female and the male existed already in the
early stages of the development of species, and that such divergence,
or sex-dimorphism, to use the biological term, becomes more and more
frequent and conspicuous as we ascend to the higher types. The
essential functions of females and males become more separate, their
habits of life tend to diverge, and to the primary differences there
are added all manner of secondary peculiarities. We found, however,
especially in our study of the familial habits, that these
supplementary differences could not be regarded