than the workers whom they guard are not uncommon. But all these soldiers are Amazons,[1]—or, more correctly speaking, semi-females. They can work sturdily; but being built for fighting and for heavy pulling chiefly, their usefulness is restricted to those directions in which force, rather than skill, is required.
[Why females, rather than males, should have been evolutionally specialized into soldiery and laborers may not be nearly so simple a question as it appears. I am very sure of not being able to answer it. But natural economy may have decided the matter. In many forms of life, the female greatly exceeds the male in bulk and in energy;—perhaps, in this case, the larger reserve of life-force possessed originally by the complete female could be more rapidly and effectively utilized for the development of a special fighting-caste. All energies which, in the fertile female, would be expended in the giving of life seem here to have been diverted to the evolution of aggressive power, or working-capacity.]
Of the true females,—the Mothers-Elect,—there are very few indeed; and these are treated like
註
- ↑ Amazon. 希臘の傳說に據れば、往古黑海々岸並びに高加索山中に住居したる女子の一人種にて、男子を排斥し、戰爭と狩獵とを事とせりしもの。從つて戰爭好きの女、男性的なる女、慓悍な女、女丈夫等の意を有つやうなれり。
