, or plunges us down to the
depths of degradation and tragedy.

While this sex hunger belongs equally to men and women, it has come to
be associated with women, until we even speak of them as "the sex."
Hence, when we are discussing women, we are generally discussing the sex
interest common to both men and women, and this disturbs our point of
view. The fact is that sex interest is a common possession, that the
unit in human life, even more than among lower animals, is always a male
and a female bound together by love. Just as a body can function in
sleep or under the influence of a narcotic, for a time seemingly
independent of the mind, so a man or a woman can live for a time in
seeming independence of the opposite sex; but from any biological point
of view, such a separate existence of male and female is only a
transient effort. The half-life must find its mate or, after a few brief
days, it dies, leaving its line extinct. For all the larger purposes of
life, man is but a half-creature, and woman is equally a fragment.

It is, of course, conceivable that these two halves of the biological
unit might have been made, or might have developed, alike in everything
except the sexual function. At least they might have been as much alike
as men are alike. They might have been of the same size, possessed of
the same strength, of the same figures and gestures, complexion and
hair. Their voices might have been alike. They might have had the same
kinds of nervous systems, with the same desires, feelings, ideas and
tendencies. In the assertions and arguments born of intellectual,
industrial, social and political readjustments, it is often assumed
that this is the case. Differences are minimized or denied, and an
attempt is made to resolve the world of men and women into a world of
human beings capable of living together in mingled competitions and
cooperations, regardless of sex, except where the reproductive process
is considered. But this view is superficial; born of argument it breaks
down when confronted by any body of significant facts.

Again, it has happened that in the long struggle of developing
civilization, sometimes one and sometimes the other sex has gained what
has seemed an advantage over the other, just as in the development of
any man's individual life, his brain may gain a seeming advantage over
his stomach, so that it has more than its fair share of nourishment and
activity. Arguing from such a case, we might