production from fission to parthenogenesis,
the female may in this sense be said to exist alone and perform all the
functions of life including reproduction. In a word, life begins as
female" (p. 313). Adding to this statement the assertion that the male
developed at first as a mere parasite, in the actual, physical sense,
Ward proceeds to build up his famous Gynaecocentric Theory, which is
familiar to all students of social science, and need not be elaborated
here. It is obvious that a thorough biological knowledge destroys the
fundamental concept on which this theory is founded, for there is no
doubt that life begins as neuter or sexless, and not as female.]

There are a number of other forms of asexual reproduction, or the
"vegetative type" (Abbott's term, which includes fission, budding,
polysporogonia and simple spore formation). Budding (as in yeast) and
spore formation are familiar to us in plants. Such forms are too distant
from man, in structure and function, for profitable direct comparison.
Especially is this true with respect to sex, which they do not possess.

Parthenogenesis includes very diverse and anomalous cases. The term
signifies the ability of females to reproduce in such species for one or
a number of generations without males. Many forms of this class (or more
strictly, these classes) have apparently become specialized or
degenerated, having once been more truly sexual. Parthenogenesis
(division and development of an egg without the agency of male sperm)
has been brought about artificially by Jacques Loeb in species as
complicated as frogs.[1,2] All the frogs produced were males, so that
the race (of frogs) could not even be theoretically carried on by that
method.

The origin of sexual reproduction in animals must have been something as
follows: The first method of reproduction was by a simple division of
the unicellular organism to form two new individuals. At times, a fusion
of two independent individuals occurred. This was known as conjugation,
and is seen among Paramecia and some other species to-day. Its value is
probably a reinvigoration of the vitality of the individual. Next there
was probably a tendency for the organism to break up into many parts
which subsequently united with each other. Gradually some of these
uniting cells came to contain more food material than the others. As a
result of their increased size, they possessed less power of motion than
the others, and in time lost t