Note 60 — Chapter VI · ANTAGONISM BETWEEN GROWTH AND SEXUAL GENESIS.

When, after having held for some years the general doctrine elaborated in these chapters, I agreed, early in 1852, to prepare an outline of it for the Westminster Review, I consulted, among other works, the just-issued third edition of Dr. Carpenter’s Principles of Physiology, General and Comparative—seeking in it for facts illustrating the different degrees of fertility of different organisms, I met with a passage, quoted above in § 339, which seemed tacitly to assert that individual aggrandizement is at variance with the propagation of the race; but nowhere found a distinct enunciation of this truth. I did not then read the Chapter entitled “General View of the Functions,” which held out no promise of such evidence as I was looking for. But on since referring to this chapter, I discovered in it the definite statement that—“there is a certain degree of antagonism between the Nutritive and Reproductive functions, the one being executed at the expense of the other. The reproductive apparatus derives the materials of its operations through the nutritive system, and is entirely dependent upon it for the continuance of its function. If, therefore, it be in a state of excessive activity, it will necessarily draw off from the individual fabric some portion of the aliment destined for its maintenance. It may be universally observed that, when the nutritive functions are particularly active in supporting the individual, the reproductive system is in a corresponding degree undeveloped,—and vice versâ.” P. 592.