In cross-breeding, the conditions cease not only to be those of self-fertilising, but they cease, moreover, to be those of the close inbreeding of self-fertilisation. In the "hybrids" obtained by crossing the higher-vigoured male sex-cells of the "pure" Dominants with the higher-vitalised female sex-cells of the "pure" Recessives, the Dominants--because Dominance is prepotent for exterior characteristics--submerge the external traits of the Recessives, which are prepotent for vital and internal functioning. Such Dominants are a bi-sexual species in which the male is prepotent. And to be male, means that they have expended, in terms of structural development, a great proportion of the female Vital power inherent in them; thus masking the Recessive female traits in them, as regards exterior characteristics. But since reproductive power inheres in these Recessive traits, these traits are preserved in the sex-cells, equally with the Dominant traits. The plants being not only bi-sexual, but self-fertilising also, the sex-cells must obviously be bi-sexual too; in order to provide the organism with factors both of life and development. Every sex-cell is a hybrid cell, therefore; bearing both Dominant and Recessive traits. But, like their parents, in some, the Dominant, in others, the Recessive traits are prepotent. And the Dominant sex-cells mating with Dominants, the Recessives with Recessives, the original types of so-called "pure" Dominants and "pure" Recessives reappear in the third generation.
_Self-fertilising organism is a female organism with a male organism differentiated in it_
Because the female represents the Life-potential of species and the Vital potential of organisms, a self-fertilising plant or creature must be regarded as a female organism, with a male organism of Adaptation, or Differentiation, developed in it. This male organism energises both its developmental and its functioning power, and fertilises it; although the _potential_ of structure, of growth, of function and of reproduction are engendered in the female organism. The female is the root-stock or parent-stem of all species, therefore.
If Dominance is Maleness, and Recessiveness is Femaleness, and if Dominance energises structural development while Recessiveness engenders reproduction, a Dominant self-fertilising plant is a female plant, with a male plant of superior Dominance differentiated in it. While a Recessive self-fertilising plant is a female plant of superior Recessiveness, with a male plant of inferior Dominance differentiated in it. In crossing stock of superior Dominance with stock of superior Recessiveness, the Dominant prevails over the Recessive in the general structural traits of the resulting "hybrid," but not in its reproductive inherence. The new hybrids being male in inherence, nothing is added to the female reproductive, or Vital, potential in them. The root-stock transmits to its sex-cells therefore just as its grandmother did--Recessives of her type, and Dominants of the type of the Dominant male engrafted on her, of the male grandfather of this third generation, that is. Hence reversion.