The reader will soon perceive that there are two standards. The first is constituted by the child and its anatomical and physiological characteristics. The second is constituted by the characters of the ape, the savage, and the aged human creature. As each char- acter in a man or in a woman comes before us for consideration we shall instinctively place it between the same characters as they appear associated with infantilism and with senility. When it is there placed we shall observe whether on the whole it tends to lean towards the one side or the other, towards infant- ilism or towards senility. Let me say at the outset that in pointing out that such and such a character in men or in women brings men or women near to children or the apes, I have no wish to disparage the sex in question. It is simply that thereby we may be helped to understand the significance of the par- ticular masculine or feminine character before us. The larger question of the significance of infantilism and senility themselves in the evolutionary process will perhaps become clearer as our examination pro- ceeds.
The reader will, however, perceive immediately Google 22 MAN AND WOMAN.
that these two standards of infantilism and senility are of very unequal value. The standard offered by the child is comparatively simple and DIAGRAM SHOWING RELATIVE PROPORTIONS OF CHILD AND ADULT.
(Langer.)
uncomplicated. The child with its relatively enor- mous head, its large protuberant abdomen — " all brain and belly," as some one defines it — its small chest, short feeble legs, comparatively vigorous arms, Google HOW TO APPROACH THE PROBLEM. 23 smooth almost hairless skin, large liver, kidneys, thymus, and suprarenal capsules, presents us with a distinct anatomical picture; and the facts of the child's physiological and psychic life are also fairly clear. But the compound standard, on the other side, of simian, savage, and senile characters is much less clearly defined. We encounter, for instance, the fact that the anthropoid apes at an early period of life often present characters quite unlike those they exhibit in the adult form. The young anthropoid is comparatively human in character, the adult ape is comparatively bestial in character. The young ape has a smooth globular head and a relatively small face, as man has; the profile is more human, with little prognathism; the base of the skull also is formed in a more human way than in the adult ape; and, above all, the brain is relatively very much larger than in the adult 1 If we take, for example, the gorilla, we find that the foetus differs from the adult by having relatively a much larger head, a longer neck, a more slender trunk, shorter limbs, a longer thumb and great toe; while the head is more globular, the face less prognathous, and the hand more like man's. 2 In nearly all these characters the foetal gorilla approaches Maa The adult male Ape has rapidly developed into a condition far removed from his early man-like state. The brain has become relatively very small, and his receding skull has become hideous with huge bony crests, sharp angles, and on its enormously enlarged facial portion prominent outstanding superciliary ridges, projecting jaws, and receding chin; while the dark hairy body has also become more bestial in character. The female Ape remains midway between the infantile and the adult male condition. So far as 1 See, for instance, Professor J. Ranke, " Ueber Beziehungen des Gehirns zum Schadelbau," at the Danzig meeting of the German Anthropological Society, August 1891.
2 Deniker, " Recherches anatomiques et embryologiques sur les Singes anthropoides," Archives de Zoologic experimentalc, 1885-86.
/ Google A. SKULL OP ADULT GORILLA. B. SKULL OF YOUNG GORILLA. C. SKULL OF MAN.
(British Museum Guide to Mammalia.)
the specifically human type of his early years, but the Ape in the course of his short life goes very much farther along the road of degradation and premature Google HOW TO A senility. The Ape human endowment, away from it; Mar portion of human c a less extent falls more and more to t or shortly afterward the Apes and Mai movement along th< tion, but that a time development ceases as to answer to the I so that henceforth development of lo\ towards degeneratic ment that is absolut vation and stability We might say that place sheltered froi upward direction, 1 development is met environment, witho movement We see, therefore, that the infantile condition in both the Apes and Man is somewhat alike and approximates to the human condition; the adult con- dition of both also tends to be somewhat alike and approximates to the ape-like condition. The phenomena which we find among the lower human races are in harmony with those we find among the Apes and in Man generally, although the divergencies are so wide that we cannot speak so definitely. In some respects some of the black races may be said to be more highly evolved than the white European races. Thus the short body and long legs which we usually find among negroes are far removed from the simian condition, and equally far removed from the infantile condition. On the whole, it may be said that the yellow races are nearest to the infantile con- Google 26 MAN AND WOMAN.
dition; Negroes and Australians are farthest removed from it, often although not always in the direction of the Ape; while the white races occupy an intermediate position. 1 In certain characters, however, the adult European is distinctly at the furthest remove as well from the simian and the savage as from the infantile condition; this is especially so as regards the nose, which only reaches full development in the adult white. In some other respects, as in the amount of hair on the body, the adult European recedes both from the specifically human and from the infantile condition, and remotely approaches the Ape.
The variations and uncertainties are so considerable that we can never assume that because a given char- acter is simian or savage or senile, it belongs to all three groups; nor can we base arguments on any such assumed identity of the three groups. Practically, however, we do find that these three groups agree in various particulars to furnish characters which are removed to the furthest extremity from the child. Such characters are the comparatively small head, the large and fierce face, the long limbs, the general tend- ency to hairiness, the dark and wrinkled skin, the com- parative absence, usually, of fat and the exaggeration of the muscular and bony systems, a general tendency to ossification, and on the nervous and mental side a general inclination to rigidity and routine. Such characters are usually, though not quite universally, simian, savage and senile. So that we have on the one side the group of immature characters, and on the other side the group of over-mature characters; and any characteristic of the male or female adult indi- vidual may lean in either of these directions.
Even, therefore, when the facts of secondary sexual differences are fairly established, there is sometimes a certain difficulty in arriving at the significance of the 1 See Professor J. Ranke, " Ueber das Mongolenauge," etc., at the Bonn meeting of the German Anthropological Society, 1888.
Google HOW TO APPROACH THE PROBLEM. 2J facts. It has to be added, as a further difficulty, that the facts themselves are in a very large number of cases by no means well established. F.ew persons have made it their business to ascertain sexual differ- ences; such differences have most usually come to light incidentally in the course of more general in- vestigations. Again, nearly all those sexual differences which I have proposed to call tertiary are merely a matter of averages. In order to obtain reliable results, not only must the investigation be accurately and uniformly carried out, it must be extended to a very large number of individuals. By confining our observations to a small number of individuals we either reach results that are expected or that are unexpected; in the former case we accept them with- out question; in the latter case we suspect a fallacy and reject them. Thus, for example, Quetelet, an unreliable statistician but a man of genius who did much to open out new lines of investigation to place the knowledge of man on a sure basis, used to draw his conclusions from a few selected cases which he regarded as typical. This was a thoroughly vicious method which could only lead to expected results. Thus he prepared a table to show the comparative height and weight of men and women at all ages; this table shows with beautiful uniformity that at no age are females taller or heavier than males. Subse- quent investigation, on a more extensive scale and in a large number of countries, has shown that during certain years of development girls are distinctly heavier and taller than boys. This fact was not suspected in Quetelet's time, and it is evident that if in his group of cases of boys and girls at the age of thirteen he had found that the girls were heavier and taller than the boys, he would have said to himself: "This result is so extremely improbable and at variance with my other results, that I have evidently committed an error of judgment here." Then he would perhaps select a fresh series of cases, and if the Google 28 MAN AND WOMAN.
result happened to reverse his previous questionable result he would be at once reassured in his error. Again, until quite recent times it has over and over again been emphatically stated by brain anatomists that the frontal region is relatively larger in men, the parietal in women. This conclusion is now beginning to be regarded as the reverse of the truth, but we have to recognise that it was inevitable. It was firmly believed that the frontal region is the seat of all the highest and most abstract intellectual processes, and if on examining a dozen or two brains an anatomist found himself landed in the conclusion that the frontal region is relatively larger in women, the probability is that he would feel he had reached a conclusion that was absurd. It may, indeed, be said that it is only since it has become known that the frontal region of the brain is of greater relative extent in the Ape than it is in Man, and has no special connection with the higher intellectual processes, that it has become possible to recognise the fact that that region is relatively more extensive in women. It is only in the case of observations which are carefully and methodically carried out on a large number of subjects, and without prepossession — as in the case of Broca's brain registers, which were not worked out until after his death — that results can be obtained which cannot be questioned.
We have to recognise, it will be seen, not merely the difficulties which come from too small a number of observations, where we have the resource of putting one series of observations against another, but also the more serious difficulty of inevitable bias in the investigator's mind. This bias has an unfortunate tendency to run on similar lines, so that we gain nothing by putting one observer's results against another observer's results. Or, again, the results obtained by two observers, each working in accordance with his own bias, may be so disparate that there is no comparison. Thus one conscientious investigator Google HOW TO APPROACH THE PROBLEM. 29 (like Manouvrier) may find that all the facts of anatomy and physiology point to the superiority of women; another, equally conscientious (like Delaunay), may find that they all point to the superiority of men.
I have endeavoured to set in the clearest light those facts of sexual difference which may be regarded as fairly well ascertained by a large number of observations in the hands of numerous competent investigators. So far as possible, I have ignored or placed in the background those facts which are still unsettled. In many cases I have been able to place side by side facts which, although by no means necessarily new, had not previously been placed in a juxtaposition which brought out their significance. In other cases I have found, after much trouble and inquiry, even on matters where precise knowledge seemed easily attainable, that the results so far reached are so contradictory or incomplete that nothing can be done with them. Occasionally I have noted such results in passing, merely to indicate how the matter in question at present stands. An incom- plete or unsupported result may at least serve as the stimulus to a more conclusive investigation. With this thought I have willingly exposed the painfully barren tracts in our knowledge of secondary sexual characters.
While the present volume is, so far as I am aware, the only attempt to deal comprehensively with the question of human secondary sexual characters from the modern standpoint, there are several books of earlier date which must be mentioned in this connection. The first genuinely scientific effort in this direction with which I am acquainted is Ackerma nn's Ue ber die k'd rperliche VerschiecfanheiL des Mannes vom Wei be a usser den £tt^ Geschl echtst heilen (Koblenz, 1788). XcTeeraiann was a "pupil of the famous anatomist Soemmering, and his book, though brief and bald (corresponding with the state of knowledge at that time), is commendably scientific and free from speculation. Then comes Burdach. In his great work on physiology (Die Physiologie~aTs Erfahrungswissenschajt^ 1826-40) that re- markable man dealt very fully with all the aspects of sexual Google 30 MAN AND WOMAN.
difference which at that time it was possible to deal with. While his statements are sometimes too bold and often require some revision, his treatment of the question on the whole is astonishingly accurate. Burdach neglected some lines of scientific advance which we now regard as valuable, and was too much under the influence of philosophical conceptions, but he faces this problem in the broadest and most genuinely scientific manner, and anticipates very many of the results of subsequent investigation. Even up to the present day there has been no better statement of this complex problem than that of the inspired physiologist of Konigsberg. Burdach's results were often a little ahead of his facts; inspiration is not a re- cognised modern method of scientific research, and no biolo- gist of Burdach's immense range has since his time been able to treat the problem in the same broad and assured manner. Darwin touched on human secondary sexual characters in his Desc ent of Man, but only in so far as they illustrated his general theory of sexual selection. The great work of Ploss and Max Bartels, Das Weib in der Natur- und Volkerkunde [ %x& edition, Leipzig, 1 89 1), although it deals primarily with anthropological and ethnographic differences among the lower human races, must be mentioned. Dr. Harry Campbell's Differences in the Nervous Organisation of Man and Woman: Physiological and Pathological (London, 1891) is interesting though discursive.
Lombroso and Ferrero's La Donna Delinquente, la Prostituta e la Donna Normale (Turin and Rome, 1893) must also be men- tioned, because, although its chief subject is the criminal woman, the first part is devoted to the investigation of the character- istics of the normal woman; it is the most remarkable and original.study of the subject that has appeared in recent years, although its results are sometimes open to question. It was not published until my own book was almost completed, but I have been able to insert a few notes and references concerning some of the more important points in it. For the most part q uestio ns of se xual di fference have been left of recent years to m agazi ne ess ay ists — whoseTucubrations are generally too slight alftTtoo p urtjlyliterary to d eserve mentio n — and to philosophers; of the latter Lotze, Schopenhauer, ancTHerbert Spencerhave perhaps touched the matter with most acuteness, though usually in an in- complete and one-sided manner.
Google 3i CHAPTER III.
THE GROWTH AND PROPORTIONS OF THE BODY.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MALE AND FEMALE FORMS — SIZE AT BIRTH — GREATER DEVELOPMENT OF GIRLS AT PUBERTY — SEXUAL DIFFERENCES IN HEIGHT OF ADULTS — WEIGHT COMPARATIVELY UN- IMPORTANT — SEXUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE GROWTH AND PROPORTIONS OF THE BODY — THE ABDOMEN — THE BREASTS— THE CHEST — THE ARM — THE HAND — THE INDEX FINGER — THE LEG — THE FOOT — THE FUTURE OF THE LITTLE TOE — GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.
WHEN we contemplate the human figure — or, if we prefer, those classic representations of it which we owe to the genius of Greek sculptors — we note certain obvious sexual differences in form and contour. The man is larger, with a certain tendency to rugged though not unbeautiful outline which conveys an im- pression of energy; his bony prominences are usually more conspicuous, and his muscles are everywhere more clearly defined. The woman is smaller and more delicately made; the bony points are less clearly seen, and the muscles, even although they may be powerful, are softly encased in abundant connective tissue which makes them less obvious. The man's form is erect and closely knit; the woman's is more uneven, with large hips and flowing protuberant curves of breast and abdomen and flanks. While the man's form seems to be instinctively seeking action, the woman's falls naturally into a state of comparative Google 32 MAN AND WOMAN.
repose, and seems to find satisfaction in an attitude of overthrow.
The sexual contrasts of this simple kind are fairly obvious, and they have their significance. A more precise knowledge of the sexual differences in the human form has only grown up during the past century. The old masters, like Leonardo and Diirer, seem to have possessed a considerable science of human proportion, but their science does not appear to have been based on a wide induction of facts, and they usually subordinated it to their art During recent years anatomists and anthropologists have been engaged in building up a detailed knowledge of the growth and proportions of the human body according to age and to sex. They are yet far from having reached the end of their labours, but certain definite conclusions are becoming evident; and while it is here impossible to discuss fully a subject which has produced so large a mass of work, it will be possible to indicate some of the main results.
At birth male infants are already rather heavier than female infants, and somewhat taller (about one- fifth of an inch in England and Scotland, according to the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association), and their chest-girth is greater. There is also a greater tendency to variation in the height of male infants, while the development of female children shows greater regularity. During the early years of life the comparative growth of the sexes has not been very closely studied; both boys and girls grow rapidly during the first two years of life, and slowly during the third and fourth, the boys appearing to keep ahead, as they do also from the ages of five to nine or ten in England. 1 It was always supposed, until some twenty years ago, that this superiority of the male is maintained throughout the whole period of development; this conclusion agreed with a priori 1 Report of the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association, Google GROWTH AND PROPORTIONS OF THE BODY. 33 ideas' on the subject, and was supported by a few observations made by Quetelet. In 1872 Bowditch began to collect and publish statistics of the height and weight of nearly 14,000 boys and 11,000 girls in Boston and its neighbourhood. These investigations mark an epoch in our knowledge of human develop- ment; they were followed and confirmed in 1876 by those of Pagliani on a large number of Italian children; in 1883 by the Anthropometric Committee's Report on British children; in 1890 by Axel Key's observa- tions on 15,000 boys and 3000 girls in Sweden; and in 1 89 1 by Emil Schmidt's investigation of nearly 5000 boys and 5000 girls at Leipzig.
Bowditch's original tables were published in the Boston Medi- cal and Surgical Journal ^ December 1872; his complete study, " On the Growth of Children/' appeared in the Eighth Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, 1877; see also, for a summary of Bowditch's results and for the British results, C. Roberts, Manual of Anthropometry, 1878. Luigi Pagliani's first monograph, " Sopra alcuni Fattori dello Sviluppo Umano," appeared in the Archivioper VAntropologia, 1876, vol. vi.; his complete investigations were published in the Archivio di Statistica, Ann. L, voL iv., 1877. Professor Axel Key's paper, Die Pubertatsentwickelung und das Verhaltniss derselbenzu den Krankheitserscheinungen der Schuljugend, was read at the Inter- national Medical Congress of Berlin, but was published separ- ately, 1890. Schmidt's results are briefly stated in the Corre- spondenstzblatt der deutschen Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologic, April 1892; in the same paper will be found bibliographical references to other recent investigations in the development of children. All the investigations I have named are important and instructive; perhaps Axel Key's pamphlet is as useful as any, as it is short and is also rich in diagrams and tables which set forth at a glance the results of other investigators as well as those of the author himself. Other interesting and extensive investigations in which the same sexual differences are brought out are those of Jastchinsky on Polish and Jewish children in Warsaw schools, and those of Geisler and Ulitzsch on 21,000 German children, both of which are summarised in the Jahres- berichte der Anat, und Phys., 1890; also Dr. Sargent's investiga- tion of 1600 American school children and students recorded by him in a paper on " The Physical Development of Women," Scribner i s Magazine, 1889; in a forthcoming book he gives the results of a very much wider investigation.
3 Google 34 MAN AND WOMAN.
There can now be no doubt that, for a period of several years during the development of puberty, girls of European race are both taller and heavier than boys of the same age. The amount of the difference, and the exact age at which this predomin- ance of girls begins and ceases, vary in different races and under different conditions.
In Great Britain girls grow more rapidly than boys between the ages of 10 and 15; and at the ages of 11 J to 14J they are actually taller, and between the ages of 12 J and 15 \ actually heavier, than boys at the same age. The acceleration in the growth of girls seems to be coincident with a retardation in the growth of boys. At the age of 15 boys again take the lead, growing at first rapidly, and then more slowly, and their complete growth is attained, prac- tically, about the age of 23. Girls, on the other hand, grow very slowly after the age of sixteen, and attain their full stature about the twentieth year. Both in Europe and the United States the year of most active growth appears in boys to be the sixteenth, in girls the thirteenth or (as in Sweden) the fourteenth. The period of active growth is preceded by a period of marked delay in growth, reaching a maximum in about the eleventh year in boys and the tenth in girls, in whom, however, it is less regular and conspicuous; this has been verified in America, England, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Italy. In the United States during the first twelve years of life boys are from one to two inches taller than girls of the same age; at about 12J years of age girls begin to grow faster than boys, and during the fourteenth year are about one inch taller than boys of the same age; during the sixteenth year boys again become taller. The English and American girls resemble each other on the whole more than the English and American boys. Thus both the English and American girls put on about 10J lbs. during their thirteenth years, but the English boy puts on nearly 16 J lbs. during his six- Google GROWTH AND PROPORTIONS OF THE BODY. 35 YEARLY INCREMENTS OF HEIGHT AND WEIGHT BETWEEN AGES OF 7 and 20. {Axel Key.)
Google 36 MAN AND WOMAN.
teenth year, the American boy only 14 lbs. The American boy and girl at this period (although not later on) resemble each other also to a greater extent than the European boy and girl; the period of the developmental supremacy of the American girl is short and its degree is inconsiderable, while in Sweden it extends from the twelfth to half way through the sixteenth year; in Germany it begins during the eleventh year and extends up to the sixteenth year; 1 in Italy, also, it covers the same period, and is well marked in degree. This comparatively slight pre- ponderance of the American girl is no doubt due to the great developmental activity of the American boy during the whole period of puberty; from his thirteenth to his eighteenth year he is the tallest and heaviest boy, on the average, yet produced and measured; during all other years, before and after, the Swedish boy comes to the top. The Swedish girl keeps at the head of European and American girls throughout her whole evolution, except, as regards weight alone, during her fourteenth year, when she yields to her American sister. In Sweden puberty both for boys and girls is a year later in reaching completion than either in America or Italy. All these variations are but minor modifications of the general rule that the evolution of puberty is more precocious in girls than in boys, being both begun and completed at an earlier age.
The development of puberty is considerably influenced by alimentation and hygiene— that is to say, by the social class to which the child belongs. But the influence of social condition seems to be strictly limited. Pagliani and Axel Key have given special attention to this point. In Italy the differences in development between well-nourished and ill-nourished children is very marked, but Pagliani has shown that though the develop- ment of the ill-nourished is slow, this is largely compensated by 1 This is shown by Geisler and Ulitzsch's examination of 21,000 children belonging to Freiburg, in Saxony.
Google GROWTH AND PROPORTIONS OF THE BODY. 37 its prolongation, while the development of the well-nourished is rapid and precocious, but small in its later stages. (It is worth noting that in this respect girls follow the law of development of the well-nourished classes.) t While alimentation enormously influences the rate of growth it has thus comparatively small influence on the final result, which is chiefly affected by race and sex. Axel Key does not find the compensatory process takes place quite in the same manner observed by Pagliani; according to him the period of puberty is delayed in children of the poorer classes, but then takes place very rapidly, to be completed at the same period as in the well-to-do classes. He compares the development of the poor to a feather which can be strongly bent CHART SHOWING COMPARATIVE INCREASE IN HEIGHT OF SWEDISH BOYS AND GIRLS.
{Adapted frotn Axel Key,) only to fly back rapidly when the pressure is removed; but if the pressure is too great or too prolonged the retractility may be largely lost. Quetelet, Pagliani, Bowditch, Broca, Dally, and Axel Key seem to agree that environment, alimentation, exer- cise, climate, altitude, occupation modify the rate of growth with more intensity the more removed the individual is from the final stage of development. The height finally attained depends chiefly on sex and race.
Axel Key, in his investigations, took into account the subject's state of health, and found that in boys the period of most rapid growth was also the period of greatest freedom from disease, while the curve of ill-health increased markedly at the begin- Google 38 MAN AND WOMAN.
ning of puberty when growth is at a minimum, and rose again when growth is nearly completed. There are no other observa- tions on an equally large scale to check these results, which are by no means in harmony with the vulgar notion regarding the weakness of the growing boy. Key did not find the relation between growth and resistance to disease so clearly marked in girls; this he attributes to the comparatively unhealthy con- ditions under which girls are placed. I may add that the statistics of the insanity of adolescence in girls, as recorded by Bevan Lewis, confirm Key's result that the period of growth is a period of resistance to disease; of 77 cases of adolescent CHART SHOWING COMPARATIVE INCREASE IN WEIGHT OF SWEDISH BOYS AND GIRLS.
{Adapted from Axel Key.} insanity in girls between the ages of twelve and twenty-one only three cases occurred up to the age of fifteen, while 56 cases, or nearly three-fourths, occurred between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one.
A woman may be said to have reached her full development at the age of twenty; a man continues to show a fair degree of development for some years after this age, especially under favourable conditions. Venn and Galton have shown by their investigations on Cambridge students that the student's head, for Google GROWTH AND PROPORTIONS OF THE BODY. 39