In higher animals, it is true that the contrast shows
itself rather in many little ways than in any one striking
difference of habit, but even in the human species the difference
is recognized. Every one will admit that strenuous spasmodic bursts
of activity characterize men, especially in youth, and among the
less civilized races; while patient continuance, with less violent
expenditure of energy, is as generally associated with the work of
women."
We must shortly proceed to study the origin and determination of sex,
and more especially of femaleness, in the individual, and here we shall
be entirely concerned with the new knowledge commonly called Mendelism,
to which there is no allusion in our authors' pages. Meanwhile it must
be insisted that the reader who will either read their pages for a
survey of the evidence in detail, or who will for a moment consider the
evident necessities imposed by the facts of parenthood, cannot possibly
fail to satisfy himself that the main contention, as stated in the
foregoing quotations, is correct. A further point of the greatest
importance to us requires to be made.
It is that, owing to profound but intelligible causes, the contrast
which necessarily obtains between the sexes in respect of their vital
expenditure is most marked in the case of our own species. It is one of
the conditions of progress that the young of the higher species make
more demands upon their mothers than do the young of humbler forms.
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