Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/49

Rh instinct. To constitute a passive invert, the brain, the physical basis of the psychical nature, must be composed of female tissue, must be a "female brain."

Can it be denied that the brain of a male is fundamentally different from that of a female, although in outward appearance they are practically alike? The psychical nature of a female is radically different from that of a male, consequently the fundamental nature of certain brain cells of the female must be as different from that of corresponding cells of the male as the psychical nature of a woman is different from that of a man, and as the corpus of a woman is different from that of a man. How can one explain why a six-year-old boy (the author) should class himself as a girl, give himself a girl's name, fight against his parents' course of bringing him up as a boy, and grieve because he could not be brought up as a girl, except on the assumption that the cells of his brain were identical with the cells of a girl's brain and fundamentally different from those of a normal boy?

If a surgeon could interchange the brains of a boy and of a girl, your author believes that the boy would ever afterward feel himself to be a girl, and the girl feel herself to be a boy. But it would be nearer the truth to say that with the implanting of the brain of the opposite sex, the male and female souls were also transposed. We would have an instance of a male human being with a perfect female body except the brain—an artificial amazon. Similarly, a female human being with a perfect male body except the brain—an artificial androgyne. In the natural androgyne, the female brain was formed