Inertia of sex
could not be overcome without extinguishing the race, yet an
immense force, doubling every few years, was working irresistibly
to overcome it. One gazed mute before this ocean of darkest
ignorance that had already engulfed society. Few centres of great
energy lived in illusion more complete or archaic than Washington
with its simple-minded standards of the field and farm, its
Southern and Western habits of life and manners, its assumptions
of ethics and history; but even in Washington, society was uneasy
enough to need no further fretting. One was almost glad to act
the part of horseshoe crab in Quincy Bay, and admit that all was
uniform -- that nothing ever changed -- and that the woman would
swim about the ocean of future time, as she had swum in the past,
with the gar-fish and the shark, unable to change.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE (1903)
OF all the travels made by man since the voyages of Dante, this
new exploration along the shores of Multiplicity and Complexity
promised to be the longest, though as yet it had barely touched
two familiar regions -- race and sex. Even within these narrow
seas the navigator lost his bearings and followed the winds as
they blew. By chance it happened that Raphael Pumpelly helped the
winds; for, being in Washington on his way to Central Asia he
fell to talking with Adams about these matters, and said that
Willard Gibbs thought he got most help from a book called the
"Grammar of Science," by Karl Pearson.
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