THE SECOND SEX: Facts and Myths DESTINY: The Data of Biology refecting social myths. It was long thought-and it still is believed eat vaIl of beliefs. At first the in certain primitive matriarchal societies-that the father plays no the nuclei of the two gametes, egg and sperm, was established. The part in conception. Ancestral spirits in the form of living germs are details of their union within the fertilized re first worked out supposed to find their way into the maternal body. With the advent in 1883 by a Belgian zoologist, van Beneden of patriarchal institutions, the male laid eager claim to his posterity Aristotle's ideas were not wholly discredited, however. Hegel held It was still necessary to grant the mother a part in procreation, but it that the two sexes were of necessity different, the one active and the was conceded only that she carried and nourished the living seed, other passive, and of course the female would be the passive one created by the father alone. Aristotle fancied that the fetus arose "Thus man, in consequence of that differentiation, is the active prin- from the union of sperm and menstrual blood, woman furnishing only iple while woman is the passive principle because she remains unde- assive matter while the male principle contributed force, activity, loped in her unity. "a And even after the egg had been recognized movement, life. Hippocrates held to a similar doctrine, recognizing as an active principle, men still tried to make a point of its quiescence two kinds of seed, the weak or female and the strong or male. The contrasted with the lively movements of the sperm. Today one theory of Aristotle survived through the Middle Ages and into mod otes an opposite tendency on the part of some scientists. The dis- coveries made in the course of experiments on parthenogenesis have At the end of the seventeenth century Harvey killed female dogs ern times d them to reduce the function of the sperm to that of a simple shortly after copulation and found in the horns of the uterus small physicochemical reagent. It has been shown that in certain species sacs that he thought were eggs but that were really embryos, The the stimulus of an acid or even of a needle-prick is enough to initiate Danish anatomist Steno gave the name of ovaries to the female geni. the cleavage of the egg and the development of the embryo. On this tal glands, previously called "feminine testicles, "and noted on their basis it has been boldly suggested that the male gamete(sperm)is surface the small swellings that von Graaf in 1677 erroneously iden- not necessary for reproduction, that it acts at most as a ferment: fur tired with the eggs and that are now called Graafian follicles. The ther, that perhaps in time the co-operation of the male will become ovary was still regarded as homologous to the male gland. In the unnecessary in procreation-the answer, it would seem, to many a same year, however, the"spermatic animalcules"were discovered and womans prayer. But there is no warrant for so bold it was proved that they penetrated into the uterus of the female; but for nothing warrants us in universalizing specific life processes. The it was supposed that they were simply nourished therein and that the Phenomena of asexual propagation and of coming individual was preformed in them. In 1694 a Dutchman, to be neither more nor less fundamental than those of sexual repro- duction. I have said that the latter has no claim a priori to be consid tozoon, and in 1699 another scientist said that he had seen the ered basic; but neither does any fact indicate that it is reducible to spermatozoon cast off a kind of molt under which appeared a littie any more fundamental mechanism an,which he also drew. Under these imaginative hypotheses, Thus, admitting no a priori doctrine, no dubious theory, we are oman was restricted to the nourishment of an active, living prin. confronted by a fact for which we can offer no basis in the nature of ciple already preformed in perfection. These notions were not uni things nor any explanation through observed data, and ersally accepted, and they were argued into the nineteenth century. cance of which we cannot comprehend a priori. We ca The use of the microscope enabled von Baer in 1827 to discover the. grasp the sigr ity only by In mammalian egg, contained inside the Graafian follicle. Before long manifestations, and then perhaps the meaning of the wo it was possible to study the cleavage of the egg-that is, the early: will stand revealed stage of development through cell division-and in 1835 sarcode, I do not intend to offer here a philosophy of life; and I do not care later called protoplasm, was discovered and the true nature of the Hegel: Philosophy of nature