certain percentage of the excessive death-rate of the male population as opposed to the female, yet these explanations, even allowing the utmost possible latitude to them, really only touch the fringe of the difference, with the single exception of deaths from violence and accident above alluded to, where liability and exposure may account for a somewhat larger percentage. The great cause of the discrepancy remains, without doubt, the enormously greater potentiality of resistance, in other words of constitutional strength, in the female bodily organism as compared with the male.
We must now deal at some length with a fallacy of some importance, owing to the apparatus of learning with which it has been set forth, to be found in Mr Lester F. Ward's book, entitled "Pure Sociology," notwithstanding that its fallacious nature is plain enough when analysed. Mr Ward terms his speculation the "Gynœcocentric Theory," by which he understands apparently the Feminist dogma of the supreme importance of the female in the scheme of humanity and nature generally. His arguments are largely drawn from general biology, especially that of inferior organisms. He traces the various processes of reproduction in the lower departments of organic nature, subdivision, germination, budding, etc., up to the earlier forms of bi-sexuality, culminating in conjugation or true sexual union. His standpoint
