THE SECOND SEX: Facts and Myths DESTINY: The Data of Biology tial peculiarity of the egg is that it is provided with means for nourish- tion-disquieting, as is all passive action-whereas the activity of the ing and protecting the embryo; it stores up reserve material from male gamete is rational; it is movement measurable in terms of time which the fetus will build its tissues, material that is not living sub and space. The truth is that these notions are hardly more than vaga stance but inert yolk. In consequence the egg is of massive, commonly ies of the mind. Male and female gametes fuse in the fertilized egg; herical form and relatively large. The size of birds'eggs is well they are both suppressed in becoming a new whole. It is false to say known; in woman the egg is almost microscopic, about equal in size that the egg greedily swallows the sperm, and equally so to say that m inted period(diameter. 132-. 135 mm. ) but the human sperm is he sperm victoriously commandeers the female cell's reserves, since Taller( 04-06 mm in length), so small that a cubic millimeter in the act of fusion the individuality of both is lost. No doubt move. hold 6o, ooo. The sperm has a threadlike tail a all fa ment seems to the mechanistic mind to be an eminently rational tened oval head, which contains the chromosomes. No inert sub phenomenon, but it is an idea no clearer for modern physics than stance weighs it down; it is wholly alive. In its whole structure it is action at a distance. Besides, we do not know in detail the physico- adapted for mobility. Whereas the egg, big with the future of the chemical reactions that lead up to gametic union. We can derive a mbryo, is stationary; enclosed within the female body or floating valid suggestion, however, from this comparison of the ernally in water, it passively awaits fertilization. It is the male gamet There are two interrelated dynamic aspects of life: it can nat seeks it out. The sperm is always a naked cell; the egg may or tained only through transcending itself, and it can transcen may not be protected with shell and membranes according to the only on condition that it is maintained. These two factors alway species; but in any case, when the sperm makes contact with the egg, operate together and it is unrealistic to try to separate them, yet now it presses against it, sometimes shakes it, and bores into it. The tail it is one and now the other that dominates. The two gametes at once is dropped and the head enlarges, forming the male nucleus, which transcend and perpetuate themselves when they unite; but in its now moves toward the egg nucleus. Meanwhile the egg quickly forms ructure the egg anticipates future needs, it is so constituted as a membrane, which prevents the entrance of other In the nourish the life that will wake within it. The sperm, on the contrary, starfish and other echinoderms, where fertilization takes place ex- in no way equipped to provide for the development of the ternally, it is easy to observe the onslaught of the sperms, which sur- round the egg like an aureole. The competition involved is an impor- of environment that will stimulate a new outburst of life, whereas the tant phenomenon, and it occurs in most species. Being much smaller sperm can and does travel. Without the foresight of the egg, the sperms arrival would be in vain; but without the initiative of the lat (more than 200,000, ooo to 1 in the human species ) and so each egg ter, the egg would not fulfill its living potentialities has numerous suitors We may conclude, then, that the two gametes play a fundamentally Thus the egg-active in its essential feature, the nucleus--is su identical role; together they create a living being in which both of perfcially passive; its compact mass, sealed up within itself, evokes them are at once lost and transcended. But in the secondary and nocturnal darkness and inward repose. It was the form of the sphere superficial phenomena upon which fertilization depends, it is the male that to the ancients represented the circumscribed world, the impene trable atom. Motionless, the egg waits; in contrast the it is the female element that enables this new life to be lodged in a But allegory should not be pushed too far. The ovule has sometimes It would be foolhardy indeed to deduce from such evidence that ascendence, and it ha lace is in the he In his been said that the sperm penetrates the female element only in losing book Le Temperament et le charactere, Alfred Fouillee undertakes to ts transcendence, its motility; it is seized and castrated by the inert found his definition of woman in toto upon the egg and that of man gulfs it after depriving it of its tail. This