Over no domain of the body have the endocrines a more absolute mandatory than over that of the whole complex of sex.  Both as regards the primary reproductive organs, their size and shape, and the character of their implantation, malformations and anomalies, as well as the physical and mental traits lumped as the secondary sexual, puberty, maturity, and senility, voice changes and erotic trends, virility and femininity, the internal secretions are dictators at every step.  So significant are these, that even a rough summary of the discoveries and the outlook in the field involves some consideration of the details.

CHAPTER VI

THE MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND THE FEMININE

It needs a poet to chant the epic of sex.  The mystery of it puzzled the minds of the earliest Sumerian thinkers.  As a source of deepest excitement, it generated the most revolting ceremonies, bizarre customs, astounding cruelties and incomprehensible stupidities of the race.  Men and women, as soon as they have done with their usual business of keeping themselves free of disagreeable sensations, hunger, cold, fear of enemies, betake themselves to it as a primary interest all over the world.  The most advanced psychologists of the day link the sex impulse with the windings and twistings of all human activity.

Yet the Homer of sex through the ages is still to come.  But at all times the mystery evoked speculation and attempt at explanation.  Acting upon their theories as to the nature and function of sex, men have, ever since the passing of the primeval matriarchates, segregated women, equalized them, worshipped them, or enslaved them.  Opinions have varied from ancient national aphorisms to the effect that women have no souls to the most ultramodern utterances of biologist-publicists that the differences between men and women are the differences between two species.  There are other epigrams, vast sweeping generalities, extant concerning the nature of sex, and women particularly.  All partake of the complexity of truth and therefore own a certain validity.  Still, since as a matter of fact, these items have been based upon superficial observations colored by the tradition and verbiage of the milieu, they are valuable more as human documents, as material for the psychologist, than as scientifically obtained data, able to stand unblinking before the rays of the critical searchlights.

SCIENCE VS.  ART

Not that all the vast accumulation needs to be thrown pell-mell, higgledy-piggledy into the discard.  The love lyrics of the poet, the magic of the emotions of Shelley and Poe, for instance, with their marvelous music and exquisite intonings of feeling, furnish us with important information.  They are the facts of the sex life, as much as the song of the nightingale, or the mocking laughter of the cuckoo pursued by its mate.  So Sappho and Elizabeth Browning, to take only two samples, have contributed some of the feminine reaction.  The erotic motive in literature has but paralleled the erotic motive in life, with all of its vagaries, delusions, confusions, ecstasies and suffering.