lict between individual and group
interests.

PART I

THE NEW BIOLOGY AND THE SEX PROBLEM IN SOCIETY

BY

M. M. KNIGHT, PH.D.

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM DEFINED

What is sex? Asexual and mixed reproduction; Origin of sexual
reproduction; Advantage of sex in chance of survival; Germ and body
cells; Limitations of biology in social problems; Sex always present in
higher animals; Sex in mammals; The sex problem in the human species;
Application of laboratory method.

Sex, like all complicated phenomena, defies being crowded into a simple
definition. In an animal or plant individual it is expressed by and
linked with the ability to produce egg- or sperm-cells (ova or
spermatozoa). Sexual reproduction is simply the chain of events
following the union of the egg and sperm to produce a new individual.
Looked at from another angle, it is that sort of reproduction which
requires two differentiated individuals: the male, which produces
spermatoza, and the female, which produces ova. In the case of very
simple forms, it would be simply the union or conjugation of a male and
a female individual and the reproductive process involved. Where there
is no differentiation into male and female there is no sex.

An individual which produces both sperm-and egg-cells within its body
is termed an hermaphrodite. Very few hermaphrodites exist among the
vertebrates, although they may be found in one or two species (e.g., the
hagfish). There are no truly hermaphroditic mammals, i.e., individuals
in which both the male and the female germ cells function, except
perhaps in rare instances.

Sexless or asexual reproduction assumes various forms. What is usually
considered the most primitive of these is fission or simple division, in
which the cell divides into two equal, identical parts. There is of
course no suggestion of sex here. It is fairly safe to assume that life
began thus in the world, as neuter or sexless--i.e., with no suggestion
of either maleness or femaleness.[A]

[Footnote A: This asexual type of reproduction has been misinterpreted
by a whole school of non-biological writers, who have followed the lead
of Lester F. Ward, in his classification of these neuter-organisms as
females. Ward says ("Pure Sociology," Ch. 14): "It does no violence to
language or science to say that life begins with the female organism and
is carried on a long distance by means of females alone. In all the
different forms of asexual re