But the interdependence of the sexes is so far from being a new fact
that it is as old as the evolution of sex, and the decadence and
disappearance of parthenogenesis or reproduction from the female sex
alone. Once bi-parental reproduction becomes necessary for the
continuance of the race, both sexes sink with either, and neither can
swim but with both. Yet so far are we from realizing this most ancient
of facts to-day that, on both sides of the woman question, wonderful to
relate, are to be found controversialists who are seeking to deny this
continuous lesson of so many million ages. The reader may take his
choice of folly between them. On the one hand, there are the feminists
who seek to do without man,--except for the minimum physiological
purpose. The women are to sustain the present and create the future
simultaneously, and man is to be reduced, apparently, to the function of
the drone. Thus Mrs. Gilman in "Women and Economics." Over against her
and those who think with her are to be set the men, and women too, who
tell us that "men made the State,"--a sufficiently shameful
admission--and that women have no business with these things. Do not
their mothers blush for such; to have travailed so much, and to have
achieved so little?
Fortunately, however, the greater number of those who think and
determine the deeds of the mass are beginning, though the dawn is yet
very faint, to perceive that this truth of the interdependence of the
sexes, which is part of the greater truth that mankind is an organic
whole, is not only much truer than ever to-day, but is vital to our
salvation; and save us it will.
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