Feminism and Sex-Extinction. Arabella Kenealy

increasingly empowered to fructify in living form and faculty, Human Attributes are seen to be the flower of Spiritual seed, which, sown in Life, has germinated; has struck roots of biological function into living flesh and put forth leaves in living traits; has developed in physiological processes and blossomed in powers of Mind and of body. And as the stronger and deeper the grip of its roots in the earth, the taller and nobler the oak towers heavenward, so it must be with human characteristics. The deeper and more firmly the seedling faculties strike roots in living function, the fuller and more potent springs the impulse toward that evolutionary perfection which is the goal of Human Being.

      If, however, living processes are the resultant of a Divine Influx, they are Spiritual processes. Life is then a manifestation in Matter, of Spirit. All the developments of Life are Spiritual phenomena, therefore. The imperfection and evil found in living creatures are not attributes of Life. They are crudities of rudimentary organisation, or are failures in or aberrations from the normal development of Life.

      V

      In the Evolution of Faculty, living traits are seen to have been all the while attaining to higher power by the differentiation and development of special organs to subserve their fuller function, their finer conscious apprehension, and their more complex manifestation on the material plane.

      The brain has been specialised thus to serve as the organ of Consciousness; the eye, of Vision; the ear, of Hearing; the hand, of Touch and of manipulation. The lowest organisms possess no such specialised organs of sense or of consciousness. Nor are they equipped with special reproductive organs. They reproduce by cleavage; by budding a small portion of themselves, which, when separated, grows to a mature organism.

      With other differentiations and specialisations of Function and Faculty, there has developed—for the all-important racial purpose of creating ever higher and more potent living species—the highly-complex human reproductive system, which, by its close and subtle nervous alliance with the brain, has become the medium and the instrument of a new and irresistible emotion. So that it serves not only for the perpetuation of a complex species, but, moreover, for the attraction, by natural affinity, of the mates best suited to one another.

      And in course of evolutionary progress, the emotion of Love has been all the while more and more so leavening and inspiring sex-attraction with its purer and more tender attributes, that human passion has come to combine—in those of higher nature—the flame and energy of physical attraction with the tenderness and devotion of altruistic affection. With the result that human parenthood, thus quickened and spiritualised, has become ever further empowered to evolve more highly intelligised, more beautiful and more efficient types of offspring.

      That Passion, pure and simple, has evolved out of the Male sex-instinct is certain. Even in its chivalrous development of romantic passion, are found, in transfigured form, that flame and urgence for possession which manifest crudely and cruelly in the primal male-instinct. Without this virile ardour, indeed, the sex-relation is but a poor and tepid, or a cold and sensual thing.

      Yet Passion is not Love.

      That meekness and forbearance, humility and self-surrender have been reared in the Female sex-instinct of submission to passion (primarily in aversion and fear more often than in acquiescence) is equally certain. And without these chastening factors to temper, soften and anneal, the sex-relation is a fierce and tyrannous concern. But no more than passion, is submission Love. Neither in passion nor in submission, pure and simple, is there joy of surrender or welding communion.

      Nevertheless, since every human faculty must have its roots in living function, and every living function must possess some physical organ in which its processes occur, from what human function sprang the Love that is selfless, altruistic and pitiful; soul and inspiration of the most sacred emotions—self-sacrifice, charity, mercy, devotion, tenderness? In what nursery of Human Consciousness was this fair and gentle blossom sown; to spring, to develop, and to make for gracious growth?

      Since, although it has come to lend its purity and sweetness to the Sex-passion, it neither sprang from nor has been reared in sex-instinct, is it a product of Parental Affection? Is it an evolution of the self-negation and the tenderness of parents for their children?

      VI

      Throughout Nature, the parental instinct is seen as a unique development, detached from and high above all other developments. Demanding, as it does, the complete surrender and self-denying labours of one individual in the interests of another, it differs from and traverses all other dictates. It impels a creature whose every instinct it had been—whose religion of biological survival it had been, indeed—to be wholly self-centred in its every aim and action, all at once to make another creature the focus of its interests and efforts. Where for a scratch, for a glance, the fierce female would have fallen tooth and nail upon another, now she surrenders meekly to the pangs of bringing offspring into life—and straightway licks and suckles the frail being that has riven her. Where she would furiously have driven off, or would have killed, another creature that approached her food, now she gives herself as food for this. Where lesser Fitness for survival on another's part had been signal for making such her prey, now Unfitness in the extremest degree claims her devotion and care.

      Superfluous to cite cases of maternal altruism. The mildest and most timid among creatures becomes fierce and courageous in defence of her young. Style it "merely instinct," if you will. It is none the less heroic on the part of every individual that obeys it, and does not obey it blindly and mechanically merely, but employs all her poor wit and resource to suit her heroism to the special circumstance.

      Without care and attention from the moment of its birth, the life of an infant would be reckoned in hours. The higher the organism, the more and for the longer period its infancy exacts unceasing devotion and nurture.

      Fish and moth and other species of low order are cast off in the egg. Chicks scramble out of the shell.

      The higher their grade in the scale of organisation and intelligence, the more helpless and incapable young creatures are to feed and to fend for themselves. Kittens are born blind and helpless, but after a few days they see and crawl about. The elephant-mother suckles and safeguards her baby-elephant for two whole years.

      Now, were there no purpose in all this—Were it not that such devotion to offspring serves as impulse and spur to the evolution and development of faculty in parents, Nature, in planning the complex human species, would, surely, have endowed the human infant and child with fuller powers of self-preservation.

      Were there other functions and aptitudes the exercise whereof would better stimulate and foster human progress, it is inconceivable that children would be, and would be for so long, the helpless, feckless, dependent mortals that they are.

      For ten long lunar months, the human babe is part of its mother; homed in the nest of her body, warmed by her warmth, fed by her blood. She breathes for it, digests for it, assimilates for it, exercises for it. For ten further lunar months, it is dependent upon her for the food by which it lives. For nearly a year, save for an inept power of creeping, with but small sense of direction, it requires to be moved and carried everywhere. For years it must be washed, dressed, combed, laid down to sleep at night, got up in the morning, taken for rides or for walks, played with, bidden, chidden; comforted, warmed, cooled; defended, cherished, instructed—in a hundred ways to be gently and progressively adapted to life, by way of a more or less highly-specialised environment. Even when no longer helpless, it must be provided for in the matters of housing, food, clothing, education. It must be instructed in a means of livelihood, and started on its young career.

      Among the poorer classes the child depends upon its hard-worked parents for a period varying between twelve and sixteen years. In the professional classes, the young son and daughter are not fully qualified for independent existence before the ages of twenty-three or twenty-five. In ill-health, in brain defect, and in other incapacities, parents must provide for their offspring for life.

      And seeing how the demands of the young, and the response and exactions of the parents multiply and amplify proportionally with the higher evolution of both, we are forced to believe that the small survival-value of the child, owing