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.
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