Note DK — Chapter XXII · THE MORAL STANDARD

The spirit of this intoxication of work is shown in phrases such as this: “Women deteriorated to the point where she was unfitted to do a fair share of the world’s work.” Is work a privilege or a necessity? Who is the power that has decreed this share of the world’s work? Do animals in freedom work? By the way, the alleged deterioration which presupposes a transmission from mother to daughter, with the exclusion of her son, is a biological impossibility. If the deterioration has become a unit-character, the mother must transmit half of it to her son and half to her daughter, so that boy and girl are still born equal. The only way such deterioration could be transmitted from mother to daughter—who inherits half the good qualities of her father to balance this deterioration—is that it has become a sex-unit-character, like the female breasts, hair or skin, which is contrary to all the teachings of biology. Even Lamarck would never claim that such an acquired characteristic as deterioration for work could be transmitted from mother to daughter with the exclusion of her son. On the other hand, if deterioration is not a unit-character transmissible to the son, it cannot be transmitted to the daughter either.