test of these, and their name is very far from legion, was evidently
Moses, as history shows, and he acted on this principle. On the other
hand, those who have sought to achieve the future, as Napoleon did,
failed because they defiled and flouted womanhood. The best men died on
the battlefield and the worst were left to aid the women in that supreme
work of parenthood by which alone, and only through the co-operation of
men and women, the future is made.

Thirdly, we have seen it to follow from this dedication of the greater
and vastly more valuable part of woman's energies to the future that,
just in proportion as she serves it and devotes herself thereto, she
needs present support. Biology teaches us that the male sex was invented
for this purpose; doubtless one should say for this "increasing
purpose," since it is scarcely more than foreshadowed at first in the
history of the male sex. The study of life has clearly proved that the
male sex is secondary and adjuvant, and that its essentially auxiliary
functions for the race have been increasing from the beginning until we
find them in perfection wherever two parents join in common consecration
and devotion to their supreme task, upon which all else depends and
without which nothing else could be.

And just as woman is mediate between man and the future, so man is
mediate between woman and the present. Woman is the more immediate
environment, the special providence, so to say, of childhood; and man,
in a rightly constituted society, is the special providence, the more
immediate environment of woman, standing between her and inanimate
Nature, guarding her, taking thought for her, feeding her, using his
special masculine qualities for her--that is to say, in the long run,
for the future of the race; this indeed being the purpose for which
Nature has contrived all individuals of both sexes. If we prefer such
phrases, we may say that the future or the children are parasitic upon
woman, and that woman is "parasitic upon the male," which is one woman's
way of putting it. Or we may say that these are the natural and
therefore divine relations of the various forms in which human life is
cast, and that our business is to make them more effective, more
provident and freer from the factors which in all ages have tended to
injure them.

Fourthly, we have everywhere seen cause to condemn sex-antagonism, and
it is my hope that no page or line or word of this book can be accused
o