Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/170



The Uranian and the Uraniad, especially of the higher grades, constantly seem reflexes of pre-natal influences. Their instinct is inborn. The mother's imagination and wish, quite likely sub-conscious, during her pregnancy here can come into plain coincidence with the vita sexualis of her offspring. The similisexualism of the father is repeated in the child. Or, sometimes over passing a generation, referring the boy or girl back to a remoter ancestor, the mystery of atavism is before us. The organic sex of unborn infants we know as not determined for a considerable period of gestation. Nature herself seems to hesitate, to postpone. The boy comes into the world not obviously affected in his sex as to any virile trait, born with a boy's body and a boy's mind; but unluckily for him endowed with the sexual impulses of a girl. Or the girl, blamelessly feminine in her physique, must go through life yearning for sexual union with a woman. Victims of pre-natal obsession, they may too easily mature, burdened with the intersexual Ego, bewildered as to themselves, at cross-purposes with their environments, occupations, society, moral sentiments, religious notions, with the laws, and all chances of relief.

The practical warning to married people is strong in such a history. No effort should ever be made to "influence" by any mental processes the sex of the coming child. How far this is