Coming Race be indeed represented in its higher types,-- through feminine
rather than masculine evolution,-- by a majority of beings of neither sex?



Considering how many persons, even now, through merely unselfish (not to
speak of religious) motives, sentence themselves to celibacy, it should not
appear improbably that a more highly evolved humanity would cheerfully
sacrifice a large proportion of its sex-life for the common weal, particular
ly in view of certain advantages to be gained. Not the least of such
advantages -- always supposing that mankind were able to control sex-life
after the natural manner of the ants -- would be a prodigious increase of
longevity. The higher types of a humanity superior to sex might be able to
realize the dream of life for a thousand years.


Already we find lives too short for the work we have to do; and with the
constantly accelerating progress of discovery, and the never-ceasing
expansion of knowledge, we shall certainly find more and more reason to
regret, as time goes on, the brevity of existence. That Science will ever
discover the Elixir of the Alchemists' hope is extremely unlikely. The
Cosmic Powers will not allow us to cheat them. For every advantage which
they yield us the full price must be paid: nothing for nothing is the
everlasting law. Perhaps the price of long life will prove to be the price
that the ants have paid for it. Perhaps, upon some elder planet, that price
has already been paid, and the power to produce offspring restricted to a
caste morphologically differentiated, in unimaginable ways, from the rest
of the species...