that, if woman is to remain
distinctively woman in mind, character, and temperament, and if, just
because she remains or becomes what she was meant to be, she is to find
her greatest happiness, she must orient her life towards Life Orient,
towards the future and the life of this world to come. 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.

In general it is true that, the more we learn of the characters and
histories of living beings, the more importance we attach to nature or
birth and the less to nurture or environment, vastly important though
the latter be. Thus to the student of heredity nothing could well seem
more improbable, at any rate amongst the higher animals, than that
characters so profound as those of sex should be determined by n