Some such
doctrines may help us at a later stage to decide whether it be better
that a woman should become a mother or a soldier, a nurse or an
executioner.
CHAPTER V
THE DETERMINATION OF SEX
We must regard life as essentially female, since there is no choice but
to look upon living forms which have no sex as female, and since we know
that in many of the lower forms of life there is possible what is called
parthenogenesis or virgin-birth. It has, indeed, been ingeniously argued
by a distinguished American writer, Professor Lester Ward,[4] that the
male sex is to be looked upon as an afterthought, an ancillary
contrivance, devised primarily for the advantages of having a second
sex--whatever those advantages may exactly be; and secondarily, one
would add, becoming useful in adding fatherhood to motherhood upon the
psychical plane of post-natal care and education as well.
But whatever was the historical or evolutionary origin of sex, we may
here be excused for attaching more importance--for it is of great
practical consequence--to the origin or determination of sex in the
individual. At what stage and under what influences did the child that
is born a girl become female? To what extent can we control the
determination of sex? Why are the numbers of the sexes approximately so
equal? What determines the curious disproportions observed in many
families, which may be composed only of girls or only of boys; and, as
is asserted, also observed after wars and epidemics or during sieges,
when an abnormally high proportion of boys is said to be born? These are
some of the deeply interesting questions which men have always attempted
to answer--with the beginnings of substantial success during the present
century at last.
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