but now her unconscious
evolution must give place to a conscious development. Happiness for
women! That must imply wholly independent activities, and complete
freedom for the exercise of her work of race production. Woman's duty
to society is paramount, she is the guardian of the Race-body and
Race-soul. But woman must be responsible to herself; no longer must
she follow men. The natural growth force needs to be liberated. Woman
must be freed _as woman_; she must die to arise from death a full
human being. There is no other solution to the woman question, and
there can be no other.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Woman and Labour," _The Chances of Death_, Vol. I. p. 226.

[2] Quoted from _The Emancipation of English Women_, by W. Lyon
Blease, a book which gives an unbiased, and in many respects
excellent, account of the struggle of English women to gain freedom
from the seventeenth century to the present day.

[3] _Strictures_, I. 6, Gregory.

[4] _The Emancipation of English Women._

[5] For an account of this struggle see _Sketch of the Foundation and
Development of the London School of Medicine for Women_, by Isabel
Thorne; also _The Emancipation of English Women_.

[6] _Woman and Economics_, Mrs. Stetson, p. 38.

[7] See Thomas, _Sex and Society_, chapter on "Sex and Primitive
Industry," pp. 123-146; and Ellis, _Man and Woman_, pp. 1-17.

PART I

BIOLOGICAL SECTION

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II

THE ORIGIN OF THE SEXES

Biology the starting-point of sociology--The irresistible force of
Love--The true place of woman and man in the animal
kingdom--Analogy between animal love-matings and our own--The
Life-force--Reproduction a process of nutrition--Different
modes of Reproduction--Cell-division--Successive stages of
growth--Theory of sex--Its nature and origin--Incipient sex
among the early forms of life--The true office of sex--The
principle of fertilisation--Its use to the species in
progressive development--Nutrition as a factor determining
sex--Illustration of the _volvox_--The dependence of the
male-cell upon the female-cell--The well-nourished female--The
hungry male--Relation between food supply and the
sexes--Illustrations--Lessons to be learnt--All species are
invented and tolerated by Nature for parenthood and its
service--The part played by the female--The demand laid upon
her heavier than that laid upon th