THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES
"_My state is like the lightning's light--
Now it shines forth, and now 'tis gone from sight.
At times, amid the heavens I find my seat;
At others, I am lower than my feet._"
Sa'di (Persian poet).
I
Of what order is this Woman-half of Mind which Feminism seeks to
extinguish?
* * * * *
The cerebral processes appreciable upon the Outer plane, and calculable
by Science, represent no more than a tithe of brain-activities. They are
but a single highly-specialised focus of brain-functioning.
Behind concrete Volition, Intellection, and Action, are the silent,
ceaseless, inner and incalculable workings of innumerable brain-cells
concerned with the mysterious constitution and metabolism of Life, and
its strange, potent relation and correlation with Mind and with
environment; concerned with character and attribute and impulse; with
ancestral vestiges and personal experience; with memories and instincts;
with an infinitude of occulted and imperishable records of previous
terrestrial existences, perhaps; concerned, in a word, with all the
secret springs and complex potences of Individuality; which
differentiates every thought, emotion and action of any human person
from those of every other.
And in these recondite mysteries fructifying in a hundred million
bi-sexual brain-cells, it may be that the subtle counter and
inter-operations of the Man and Woman-traits find their highest
activities, and make for their supremest issues.
Every man and woman is to every other a Sealed Book, whereof no more
than a few pages have been glimpsed--even by those nearest and dearest.
We are Sealed Books to ourselves, indeed, because we do not know the
language we are written in. For of all the muted mysteries spinning
ceaselessly within the silent-functioning cells of twin
brain-hemispheres, Science affords us but the scantest and most sketchy
information. That the grey matter coating the brain-convolutions is the
site of mentality; that the higher the intelligence, the deeper and more
intricate these convolutions are; that disease of a certain area
destroys the power of speech; while disease of some other occasions
paralysis of this or that group of muscles, loss of sensation in this or
that tract of skin. Baldly it states that a portion of a certain
convolution controls a certain movement of a hand. But the thousand and
one emotions and incentives prompting such movement, and differentiating
the resulting action across the extensive range between the noblest
benefaction and the blackest murder, baffle every scientific method.
The processes of Mind and Impulse occur on planes we have no means of
penetrating, possess no appliances whereby to estimate the ethereal
undulations thereof.
What are we? Who are we? Whence are we? Whither do we go?
All is locked within the occulted silence of our hundred million
brain-cells; each of which holds and keeps its own intrinsic secret;
each the mysterious record, it may be, of one of those countless
experiences, forms and phases, ancestral or individual, whereof every
living person is the last resultant. But the Twin-hemispheres, face to
face within the skull, like opposite pages of a book, are key to one
another; one page written in the mystical language of The Past and
Future, the other in the concrete language of The Present.
II
Is that which I surmise to be the _Woman_--and emotional half of brain,
the site of the mysterious province known as The Subconsciousness, into
the strange powers and phenomena whereof scientists are now beginning to
inquire?
Is it the seat of that which Myers designated "The Subliminal
Consciousness," but which might well be called the Supra-Consciousness,
because, in the regions of its higher functioning, it cognises things
beyond power of Concrete Consciousness to apprehend; intuitions,
premonitions, apparitions, telepathic messages?
Is it medium of those inherences and that sub-intelligent emotionalism
known as _Instinct_; which may be regarded as the implanted religion of
rudimentary organisms, leading them upward in blind subconscious
obedience, at sacrifice of their self-interests and disposition?
Respecting the regeneration of the crystalline lens of the eye of a
Triton, Bergson says:
"_Whether we will or no, we must appeal to some inner directing
principle in order to account for this convergence of effects._"
May it not be that this brain-half--seemingly functionless, albeit as
marvellously constructed and constituted as its fellow-half--is, in its
merely organic departments, the agency of such an "inner principle,"
engendering the vital potentials of Life and Evolution, of health, of
nervous recuperation and of biological repair? While in its departments
of Mind, it functions as instinct, as intuition, as inspiration,
aspiration; serves as the subtly receptive medium by way of which The
Divine Influx wells in human attribute; whereby Divine Revelation is
communicated to the concrete brain-half, for interpretation in speech
and in writing. Bergson says also: "The consciousness of a living being
may be defined as an arithmetical difference between _potential_ and
_realised_ activity. It measures the interval between representation and
action." (Duality is indicated.)
The trait essentially distinguishing the human from the brute-mind, is
Intelligent Purpose. And Purpose is the product of Impulse (or Instinct)
and Reason, (or Concrete Intelligence). (Duality again.) Impulse is an
emotion and is feminine. Reason is masculine. Intelligent Purpose may
well be, therefore, a resultant of the co-operation of the feminine half
of the brain, which supplies Impulse, with the masculine half, which
supplies Reason.
Instinct, Professor James, the American psychologist, has pointed out,
exists independently of any recognition of its purpose. While Reason
exists apart from instinct--apart therefore from the emotional impulse
which gives it the personal motive-power to become purpose. Thus, either
mode of brain without the other to supplement it would be incapable of
function.
_Self_-consciousness requires two departments of Consciousness--each of
which is aware of the other. So that a man may judge and restrain
impulses in himself that are contrary to reason and expedience, or, on
the other hand, may choose to sacrifice both reason and self-interest to
emotional impulse, noble and uplifting, or ignoble and debasing.
Describing Intellect as characterised by a natural inability to
comprehend Life, Professor Bergson further says: "Instinct, on the
contrary, is moulded on the very form of Life.... If the consciousness
that slumbers in it should awake, if it were wound up into knowledge
instead of being wound off into action, if we could ask and it could
reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of Life."
Again Duality of mental processes is inferred. As too in the following
passage:
"Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could extend its object and also
reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations--just
as intelligence, developed and disciplined, guides us into Matter....
Intelligence, by means of science ... brings us, and moreover only
claims to bring us, a translation of Life in terms of inertia.... But it
is to the very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us--by Intuition
I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable
of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely."
III
The phenomena of Hypnotism seem to set the Duality of cerebral processes
beyond dispute.
Dr. George H. Savage, Consulting Physician and late Lecturer on Mental
diseases at Guy's Hospital, in his Harveian Oration, October 1909,
testified as follows to the strangeness and authenticity of hypnotic
evidences:
"Wishing to follow our great master in not accepting anything
without personal investigation, I took advantage of the opportunity
offered by Dr. Wright, to test some of the points of most
importance to which I have referred.
"A gentleman, an engineer, who had been relieved by treatment by
Dr. Wright, was willing to allow him to demonstrate the various
stages of hypnotism and their effects.... He was asked to sit down
and talk quietly about his relationship to hypnotism. Then he was
told to go to sleep. A few passes being made over his head, he
slowly closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was sleeping
placidly. By the gentle stroking of his left arm this was rendered
inflexible. The pulse was in no way affected; pupils were equal,
but rather larger than before he slept, and were sluggish. He was
slowly aroused (it being well always to recall the subject slowly).
After a talk on general matters he stated that he had no sense of
fatigue in the arm, nor any recollection of anything said and done
during the period of hypnosis.
"He was again, in a similar way, sent to sleep. It was then
suggested that at the end of seven minutes he should lose all power
and sensibility in his right side. He was roused, given a
cigarette, which he smoked while he talked, having no knowledge of
the suggestion which had been made. About five minutes after he had
been roused, _his right arm fell useless by his side, he passing at
the same time into a partial stage of hypnosis_. _This is common
when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out. The whole of
the right side, including the face, was insensitive_; the pupils
were smaller and inactive. He was again slowly aroused, and resumed
smoking, having no feeling of oppression, or recollection of
anything which had been said or done. He was later again
hypnotised, and in that condition he was asked what had been done
formerly. After some hesitation, he, in part, recalled the facts.
"It is interesting to note that though constantly the acts
performed during hypnosis are not recalled when awake, they are
fully remembered on a second hypnosis. We tested his emotional side
by getting him to recall scenes in a comic opera, at which he
heartily laughed but had no knowledge of on waking. While
unconscious, it was suggested that when he woke he should remark
upon a strong odour of violets. He was awakened and offered a
cigarette; but, looking about the room, he asked whence the strong
smell of violets came.
"I inquired as to the revival of long-past impressions, and it
seems that occurrences which took place before his present memory
existed, had been revived and verified. But still more interesting
was his experience in reference to a mathematical formula which he
had forgotten. Being hypnotised, he dictated it, and though when
once more awake he did not remember it, when shown what he had just
dictated he recognised it as the lost formula. This, of course, is
in a way parallel to the solution of difficult problems during
sleep."
Be it observed that when at the end of seven minutes (as had been
"suggested" to him should happen) the subject lost all power and
sensibility in his right side and "_his right arm fell useless by his
side_," he passed "_at the same time into a partial state of hypnosis_.
_This is common_," Dr. Savage adds, "_when a post-hypnotic suggestion is
being carried out_."
Here is strong corroboration of my argument that the right side of the
body, with its allied half-brain, is the agent of Material
Consciousness, of muscular action and of physical sensation, and that it
operates normally in fencing in the higher faculties of Mind from the
outer plane of concrete happenings, as also of interpreting them upon
this plane.
Hypnosis is induced by devices occasioning muscular exhaustion, and thus
temporarily paralysing "voluntary muscles"--muscles, that is, which are
under conscious control. It is induced as well (as in the case cited) by
stroking, and thus putting to sleep the sensory nerves--nerves which
define the patient's consciousness of his material personality. It would
seem that by such inhibition, or paralysis, of the perceptions of the
outer consciousness, faculties of Subconsciousness--even of
Supra-consciousness--are exposed, so that Mind itself may be dealt with
direct.
Every form of insensibility is closely allied with muscular relaxation
or paralysis.
IV
Examples of the operation of the Supra-conscious faculties upon the
concrete plane are supplied by the marvellous feats of "lightning
calculators."
The most intricate mathematical problems--calculations that would call
for lengthy and complicated intellectual processes on the part of expert
mathematicians to work out by ordinary methods--are solved
instantaneously by the genius of such natural "calculators." You cannot
puzzle them; you cannot baffle them. Scarcely have you stated your
problem than they have calmly presented you with the solution. As
Maeterlinck records in his interesting book, _The Unknown Guest_, this
genius for figures developed in Colbourn and Safford at the age of six,
in Mangiamele at ten, in Gauss and Whateley at three. All that and more
than expert mathematicians laboriously acquire by decades of study and
practice, these boy-prodigies achieved by way of native faculty. Such
have not the slightest notion how they arrive at their results. These
are obtained automatically--are products of unconscious cerebration.
Maeterlinck observes of this, that the resultant "appears to rise,
infallible and ready-done, from a sort of eternal and cosmic reservoir
wherein the answer to every question lies dormant."
What is this "eternal and cosmic reservoir" if it be not Mind, or
Supra-consciousness, as distinguished from conscious intellection--a
native intuitive, but undifferentiate, or potential, consciousness which
holds the answer, "infallible and ready-done," to every question.
Truth _Is_. There is but one solution--the true one--of a mathematical
or any other problem of exact science.
A significant fact is that such prodigy boys generally lose their
mysterious faculty "_at the moment when the possessor begins to go to
school_." So soon, that is, as he develops the power of conscious
brain-processes--the power to work out his problems by concrete
methods--his native supra-conscious gift of solving them spontaneously
fails.
Intuition, the woman-mode of arriving at conclusions, lightning quick
and true without reason or reflection, is a kindred potency of Mind.
"When a man," says a French writer, "has laboriously climbed a
staircase, he is sure to find a woman at the top--although she will be
unable to say how she came there!"
He did not add the further truth, that--as with the prodigy boys--the
more you educate her to come at her conclusions by processes of
intellection, the more you rob her of her native woman-gift of
divination.
With the rising level of Faculty engendered by progressive evolution,
woman's powers of intellection have developed too.
While her own mental attributes are themselves of a very high order, and
give to her mentality an inductive subtlety and illumination lacking in
that of the male. And this high quality of brain it is that is now being
extinguished in her by straining her to masculine standards.
Progress awaits, indeed, the new and quickening impulse Life and Faculty
should derive from the Woman-mind fostered along its own inherent
lines--to supplement the mind of man. For as Bergson says, "it is to the
very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us."
And Intuition is the woman-mode of Mind.
* * * * *
The women intellectuals who have done great work have been women who
inherited talents so far above the average, as spontaneously to have
reached high mental levels, without need to have sacrificed those
womanly traits which gave the noblest values to such work.
The woman of average brain, however, attains the intellectual standards
of the man of average brain only at cost of her health, of her emotions,
or of her morale.
V
Herbert Spencer said profoundly, "_Mind is as deep as the viscera_."
Indicating it as being vital and intrinsic, at one with the occulted
sources of Life.
Mind is of an order of mentality wholly different from that of
Intelligence or Intellect. Mind is of the nature of Emotion. It is
personal, is sympathy, is divination. It is the cerebration of the Soul.
The Soul, or essential Individuality, must abide amid infinitely
delicate and delicately infinite brain-cells attuned to those spiritual
vibrations whereof Mind is the reflex. And if Mind is Emotion, the Woman
brain-half, which is the department of human emotion, must be the
mainspring of the human mind.
Great intellect, pure and simple, may exist in man or woman without or
with only a fractional leaven of Mind. This is seen in the abstractions
of scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, astronomers,
financiers, and others. Such brains are special organs of a high order
of Intellection, clear, calculating and precise of observation and
reflection; rational, deductive; admirable in their unswerving
rectitude, pitiless in their impregnable emotionlessness; rejecting all
but incontestable evidences, scrupulously aggregating and faithfully
interpreting their dry bones of numbers and data and vestiges--skeletons
of Life long since extinct, or scaffoldings of Life that lives and moves
and laughs and weeps, and bears no more semblance to their bloodless
tabulations of its modes and processes than warm, creative Mother-Earth
resembles the geological strata they describe in her; or than a
beautiful flower-garden blooms in botanical treatises; or than living
men and women are pourtrayed in text-books of Anatomy and Physiology.
Many men of Science--and all the great ones--have been men of Mind as
well as of Intellect. But the intellectual processes of Abstract Science
are no more operations of Mind than the paths by which we climb to
sun-illumined peaks are the Light upon those peaks. Mind is Spiritual
Illumination--a glimmering of The Infinite, reflected in the highest and
most subtle order of the brain-cells. Rays from it are deflected toward
the concrete, to function as Intellection. But these rays enter the
brain at a different angle from that of Mind-rays.
Like woman its medium, Mind is inspirational, wayward and elusive. It
comes we know not whence. It goes we know not whither. Receptive,
intuitive, creative, colourful, it may be unwitting of Astronomy, yet it
roams amid the stars. Ignorant of Geology, in it Immortal, the dry-bones
of The Past become immortal--arise eternally in everlasting re-creation.
Its Biology is in the lives and loves, the hopes and fears, the throes
and tears of human souls and stories. It inspires the poet, priest,
historian, romancist, artist; the seer and statesman; the philosopher
and wondering child. It exalts the humble and meek. It may be lacking in
the cleverest and most learned of men. It is found in the most ignorant
and simple women; in whom it is dumb, however, failing the intellectual
talent of expression.
VI
The Woman brain-half being medium, in its higher region, of that
_Supra_-conscious emotionalism which engenders Mind, and in its lower
region, of that _Sub_conscious emotionalism which engenders vital
impulse in the body, woman's range of mentality is wider than is that
of man; extending both higher and lower in its opposite reaches.
But because her Intelligent Consciousness is not inherent in her own
brain-half, but is supplied by her borrowed masculine brain-half, her
intelligence is more superficial, is weaker and less deep and strong of
grip than is his. And when the gap between her upper and her lower
registers is not duly bridged and stabilised by an efficient
middle-register of male-intelligence, she tends toward two extremes of
mentality, both of which are emotional. Thus she lives on the plane of
her highest emotional impulses. Or she lives on the plane of her senses.
Some women act and re-act perpetually between these two extremes.
In her highest _Supra_-reaches, she is athrill with Supra-faculties. In
her lowest _Sub_-register, she is instinct and palpitant with the
colour, the magnetic vibrations and the blind forces of Matter, which
her vital processes are evolving into Life.
Extremes which are shown, at the one end, in the reasonless animal
emotionalism of hysteria, with its abandon of control, its
inco-ordinated muscular movements, its senseless weepings, cries and
laughter; at the other end, in catalepsy, in which she exists detached
from earth and its material needs and consciousness, subsisting, it may
be for weeks together, without food or drink, withdrawn into the Inner,
and potential, zones of Life and Mind. So that, no longer subject to
limitations of Matter, she perceives without aid of the senses,
apprehends without aid of intelligence, discerns without help of the
eyes, hears without instrumentality of ears. And Time and Space no
longer circumscribing her essential faculties, she visions happenings at
the Antipodes, overhears whispers across a Continent, recalls The Past,
foretells The Future.
It is because of the potence of the Subconscious medium in her,
instinct with the magnetic forces of Evolving Matter, that, in her
intelligence, she shows as more materialistic than man is, although
warmer and more quickened in her feelings.
Living personalities and issues mean to her more than intellectual
abstractions do. She is more materialistic because she cares more for
the things that matter! The puddings which in her children's young
bodies will be transmuted into living flesh and function, are to her of
more significance than the Isosceles Triangle is.
(All that is true of the Woman brain-half must be true of the Woman
brain-half in man. In him, however, his own hemisphere dominates the
bent and faculty of its female counterpart.)
It is in the emotional impressionability of the Subconsciousness that
habit, good and bad, is formed. Hence woman's native susceptibility to
her environment--a susceptibility which renders indispensable due
protection of her mind and nature during years when habits of thought
and of conduct are shaping in her. Normal man, whose emotionalism is
(like woman's intelligence) a borrowed faculty, differs essentially from
her in this. His intelligence is inherent and more stably rooted. He is
far less mimetic, far less a creature of circumstance. His firmer will
and stronger intellect enable him to rise superior to environmental
conditions, to shake himself free alike of habit and of circumstance;
his pioneering spirit disposing him to new departures.
VII
Dual Personality, Catalepsy, Epilepsy, Shock, Insanity, Chorea are
explicable as effects of abnormal dissociations or inherent discrepant
relations between the two brain-hemispheres, which represent,
respectively, Conscious (or objective) Intelligence, and
Subconsciousness (which is subjective).
Such discrepancy occasioning confusion between the two planes of
mentality, perception becomes so blurred that, as in insanity,
_subjective_ impressions are perceived as _objective fact_. And some
idea or spectre of his own mind becoming thus objective, and being seen
out of all perspective with the facts and conditions of everyday life,
the patient may be so haunted and dominated thereby that not only his
mentality, but his actions too may take distorted shape.
While the Conscious Brain-half is a lens that focuses the Concrete, the
_Sub_conscious Brain-half is a highly-sensitised mirror (or retina) that
reflects and retains, in terms of potential Memory, all impressions and
experiences. It becomes charged thus with a medley of strange and
incongruous imprints, which, so long as the lens keeps these submerged
and subconscious--because unfocused on the plane of consciousness--do
not obtrude upon mentality. Flaws or failures in the lens of reason
allowing certain imprints to emerge, these become fixed ideas and
obsessions.
It is by way of the Subconsciousness, that the hypnotist impresses
"suggestion."
Clairvoyants and other "mediums" employ crystal-gazing and other devices
in order to fatigue, and thus to paralyse or inhibit the visual function
on the outer plane of Sight. By such means, the Subconscious visual
faculty comes into operation, and sets them _en rapport_ with their
client's subconscious mentality. This becoming _objective_ to them,
those endowed with the gift of "Second-Sight" (a faculty not to be
denied) are able to visualise in it misty impressions of the subjects'
character, thoughts and circumstances. Those rare clairvoyants who are
able to establish rapport with their client's Supra-consciousness may
catch glimmerings of future events, even. Because Supra-conscious Mind,
being Supra-Natural, is not bounded by the limitations of The Natural,
in respect of Time and Space. In it, that which Was still Is, and that
which Is-to-be already Has Been.
"Spiritists" who see or hear phenomena they attribute to "spirits" are
(when such are genuine) for the most part visualising or overhearing
phenomena of their own (or of some other's) Subconsciousness, which,
owing to errors of refraction in the lens of Consciousness, have become
_objective_ to them.
It may well be by way of magnetic vibrations communicated to Ether by
the _Supra_ or the _Sub_consciousness, that apparitions and telepathic
impressions are transmitted from the brain of one person to that of
another. So too, apparitions seen of persons lately dead, and so-called
spiritist "communications" with these, may be (when genuine) phenomena
of such etheric vibrations communicated to the Supra or the
Subconsciousness of a living person, and apprehended by him in the
objective forms of "ghosts" or "voices."
Kindred vital and powerful electric vibrations emanating, at the moment
of death, from the Subconsciousness of victims murdered, may so charge
the etheric element of houses and localities as to be communicable, for
long periods afterwards, to the Subconscious mentality of "sensitives,"
which serves thus as "wireless receiver." Such sensitives derive the
impression that the scene of the tragedy is haunted by the actual
"spirit" of the murdered.
It is as incredible, of course, that an immortal soul should be chained
to the scene of the violent death of a mortal body as it is incredible
that a "spirit" should be at the call of a "medium," who--perhaps, for a
fee--should be able, at will, to summon it back to the plane of concrete
conditions, in order that it might talk (for the most part) irrelevant
nonsense.
On the other hand it is to be believed that, for a brief period after
death, a spiritual entity may remain sufficiently in touch with the
material plane as to be able, by way of those Etheric undulations
continuous through all the planes of Being, to manifest its existence to
one in close sympathy with it.
VIII
In an article by me, "_Is Man an Electrical Organism?_" which appeared
in _The Nineteenth Century_, July, 1914, I showed--on the evidence of
careful and delicate experiments by an electrical expert--that the two
sides of the body (and presumably of the brain) are of different
electrical potential. The active, right side is _positively_
electrified, while the passive, left side is _negatively_ electrified.
Mental Telepathy and Telaesthesia prove, surely, that brain and
nerve-currents are electrical--one brain-hemisphere operating as
transmitter, the other as receiver. Since Nature employs _one_ Law only
to suspend the mighty solar systems of the Universe and to bring an
apple to the ground, is it credible that she should employ _two_ laws
for "Wireless" and for Human telegraphy, respectively?
The Hibernation both of animal and vegetative organisms shows two poles
of vital function; Life and Consciousness passing into the Recessive, or
potential, mode during such winter-sleep. Plants sleep by night.
Is Sleep a recession merely from the state of Consciousness to the
potential states of Sub- and Supra-consciousness? And do these two
states alternate normally in the opposite halves of the brain,
concurrently with the alternation of Day and Night? Night-blindness
suggests such an alternation in the dual factors of Vision--which
comprises the intrinsic _faculty_ of Vision and the concrete _function_
of visualising the external. Every concrete function normally wanes with
the waning of Day.
Hence increasing drowsiness, passing into Sleep.
Morning and evening mentality differ greatly. Intellect, reason and
physical activity are paramount during the day. Emotion and imagination
intensify with the approach of night.
Is this an alternation in function of the Male and Female
brain-hemispheres, coincident with the alternation of the dual
luminaries of our earth--the positive, unchanging Dominant Sun; the
changeful Moon, with her Recessive phases and her mystical influences
upon Life and Mind? The ante-natal life of the embryo is set in terms of
lunar months. The word "lunatic" expresses the effects of lunar phases
on persons of unstable mentality.
Whence do we derive our daily influx of Life? Though we have sunk to
rest with dissolution in our bones, we awake re-charged with powers of
living--a phenomenon for which Science has no explanation.
Life does not originate in vital processes; vital processes originate in
Life. Do we, in sleep, when processes have exhausted our daily influx of
Life-power, recruit this again from a psychical source? Are living
processes the wick of a lamp which is filled with the Spirit of Life at
each recurring dawn, spent by the day's endeavour, and re-filled again
with the following dawn?
Failure of sleep kills more swiftly than starvation. And
drug-insensibility will not preserve life unless natural sleep
supervene.
If nervous energy is a complex form of electrical energy, then the brain
in which this is stored is an electrical dynamo. Is this dynamo
re-charged during sleep from some Occult Power-station?
Since, in every equation of Science, an unknown factor reveals itself,
why not candidly confess this to be a Spiritual factor?
Spirit is no more a hypothetical medium than Ether is. And Science has
been forced to assume the existence of Ether, as a basis for its
calculations. Ether and Spirit are conceivably the same medium
manifesting on different planes--the one of Physics, the other of Mind.
IX
According to Professor Clarapede:
"The intellect appears only as a makeshift, an instrument which
betrays that the organism is not adapted to its environment, a mode
of expression which reveals a state of impotence."
A saying which supports three clauses of my hypothesis: First, that the
brain, with its tributary spinal-nervous system, is an instrument of
Consciousness wholly differentiated from, and supplementary to the
organism of Life. Secondly, that it is an instrument designed for the
adaptation of the organism to environment (the role I have assigned,
throughout, to the male). Thirdly, that the organism of Life is not
itself adapted to its environment, and that, accordingly, Adaptation to
Environment cannot be regarded as the impulse of Evolutionary
development, since the living organism has so far failed to adapt itself
to environment that it requires a highly specialised instrument to serve
as medium between itself and its surroundings.
That Intellect--being an instrument by way of which Life is adapted to
environment, as also, on the other hand, by way of which environment is
adapted to Life--is a makeshift that "reveals a state of impotence" is
not to be admitted, however, in view of the fact that it is an
instrument which preserves Life from developing along the lines of its
environment; an adaptation which would necessarily involve lapse from
typal ideals.
Intelligence taught man, in place of so adapting to environment as to
have developed the fist of a gorilla (which at a blow can crack a human
skull), to arm himself with a club. And by thus adapting environment to
his evolutionary requirements, he conserved his resources and applied
them to development along higher lines. Such impotence as may be, arises
out of the undevelopment of a rudimentary organism. Of an organism in
course of development, however. In the meanwhile, both man and woman are
provided, in their hybrid constitution, with the "makeshift" of an
instrument of opposite sex, which supplies both with the powers neither
has yet developed in himself or herself; but without which neither is
able to exist or to function.
Hybrid Humanity is still amphibious; a creature living between two
planes, the Without and the Within, the Material and the Spiritual. And
like all amphibious creatures, the human species is, in a measure,
clumsy and imperfect. Because while fitted still with organs and
faculties that have adapted to a lower plane, it possesses likewise
organs and faculties that are adapting to a higher. Its powers thus
handicapped by requiring to engender the vital potential and the
developmental power to equip it with two orders of implement, neither
order has attained perfection of construction or of function. And both
ministering to the requirements of the other, necessarily hamper the
operations and mask the characteristics of the other.
The two sexes are making all the while for higher development, each
along routes of its contrary trend. Man develops human faculty in the
direction of the Outer and material plane of Being. Woman develops it in
the direction of the Inner and psychical plane.
Man transmits to woman a brain-hemisphere and powers ever further
increased and intensified in their relation to the concrete. Woman
transmits to man a brain-hemisphere ever further indrawn and illumined
in respect of the emotional and intrinsic. Woman's brain-hemisphere,
adapting to its concrete fellow, becomes increasingly empowered to
manifest, upon the outer plane, its own essential Woman-traits in Life
and Consciousness. Man's brain-hemisphere, adapting to its diviner
fellow, becomes increasingly illumined and inspired thereby to leaven
and exalt its concrete outlook and activities.
Man's brain, by way of its responsive adaptation to the brain of woman
interior to it in the zone of Mind, becomes thus ever more
sympathetically intelligent, or intuitive, in respect of human life and
conditions, of Science and the Arts; while losing nothing of its
Dominance and concrete power, but interpreting its operations in terms
of a profounder and a nobler Chivalry. Woman's brain becomes ever more
intelligently sympathetic and practically helpful; losing nothing of its
Recessiveness, or emotional impulse, but, on the contrary, intensifying
all its Woman-attributes by extending the range and the operations of
these in terms of a profounder and a nobler Altruism.
* * * * *
Because of their hybrid constitution, there is necessarily a borderland,
alike of faculty and function, wherein the organisation and the
characteristics of the sexes merge and approximate one another's trend
and traits. This borderland represents, however, the crudest and least
differentiated department of the personal and mental powers of both. It
is a zone of Neuterdom, and marks a grade of rudimentary organisation in
which the Sex-characteristics have not yet sufficiently diverged in
development, as clearly and finely to differentiate themselves as traits
of pure and unalloyed type.
The cruder the species or the evolutionary stage of species, the less
Sex is specialised in it.