A DIFFERENCE IN THE METABOLISM OF THE SEXES 43
We have no other than a utilitarian basis for judging some variations advantageous and others disadvantageous. We can estimate them only with reference to activity and the service or disservice to the individual and society implied in them, and a given variation must receive very different valuations at different historical periods in the development of the race. Departures from the normal are simply nature's way of "trying conclusions." The variations which have proved of life-saving advantage have in the course of time become typical, while the individuals in which unfavorable variations, or defects, have occurred have not survived in the struggle for existence. Morphologically men are the more unstable element of society, and this instability expresses itself, as we have seen, in the two extremes of genius and idiocy ; and we have conclusive evidence that defects in general are more frequent in men than in women.
A committee reported to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1894,' that of some 50,000 children (26,287 boys, and 23,713 girls) seen personally by Dr. Francis Warner (1892-1894) 8941 were found defective in some respect. Of these 19 per cent. (5112) were boys, and i6per cent. (3829) were girls.
An examination of 1345 idiots and imbeciles in Scotland by Mitchell showed the following distribution of the sexes :
Male Female Male Female
Idiots, - - 430 284 or ioo to 66.0
Imbeciles, - 321 310 or ioo to 96.5
showing that "the excess of males is much greater among idiots
fully developed ; the trochanter tertius occurs more frequently (more frequently, indeed, than in the apes); the anchylosis of the first coccyggeal vertebra with the sacrum is less frequent; the presence of a fifth coccyggeal vertebra is more frequent; hypertri> is more frequent, baldness less frequent; resort to biting and scratching is more frequent. (Pl.oss, toe. ft/.. Vol. I, p. 5.) His argument, while obviously not free whimsicality, confirms the view that woman is less anatomically developed than man.
1'hysical and Mental g from the Normal among Children in Public
Elementary and >r/ of the Sixty-fourth Meeting of the A
Association for the Advancement of Science, 1894, p. 434 seq.
