mong the larger number of variations there is always a chance of the
appearance of one of superior fitness. The male in many of the lower
forms is very insignificant in size, economically useless (as among
the bees), often a parasite on the female, and, as many biologists
hold, merely a secondary device or afterthought of nature, designed
to secure greater variation than can be had by the asexual mode of
reproduction. In other words, he is of use to the species by assisting
the female to reproduce progressively fitter forms.

When, in the course of time, sexual reproduction eventuated in a
mammalian type, with greater intimacy between mother and offspring and
a longer period of dependence of offspring on the mother, the
function of the male in assisting the female became social as well as
biological; and this was pre-eminently so in the case of man,
because of the pre-eminent helplessness of the human child.[256]
The characteristic helplessness of the child, which at first
thought appears to be a disadvantage, is in fact the source of human
superiority, since the design of nature in providing this condition of
helplessness is to afford a lapse of time sufficient for the growth
of the very complex mechanism, the human brain, which, along with free
hands, is the medium through which man begins that reaction on his
environment--inventing, exterminating, cultivating, domesticating,
organizing--which ends in his supremacy.

It is plain, therefore, that species in which growth is slow are at an
advantage, if to the care and nourishment of the female are added the
providence and protection of the male; and this is especially true in
mankind, where growth is not completed for a long period of years.
In this connection we have an explanation of the alleged greater
variability of the male. Instead of an insignificant addendum to the
reproductive process, he becomes larger than the female, masterful,
jealous, a fighting specialization--still an attache of the female,
but now a defender and provider. This is the general condition among
mammals; and among mankind the longer dependence of children results
in a correspondingly lengthened and intimate association of the
parents, which we denominate marriage. For Westermarck is quite right
in his view that children are not the result of marriage, but marriage
is the result of children. From this point of view marriage is a union
favored by the scheme of nature because it is favorable t