Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/25

 not lay stress here on the moral equipment, so much as upon the temperamental understructure; the outline of a kind of masculine birthright. The reader will please note, too, that I am expressly avoiding any emphases that will create an "heroic" type, offering the sort of ideal man met in Greek drama, in classic history, or in modern romance.

Similarly, let the reader frame for himself a merely physical masculinity; virile enough, but not at all ideal. We will not busy ourselves with a male type that externally would suit the frieze of the Parthenon, or storm through the pages of Northern Sagas and Malory. Roughly made up, let us picture only a strong frame, that is to say, strong in comparison with a woman's frailer physique; with symmetry of outline, due proportion between head and body and limbs, ordinary aspects of a muscular development capable of endurance; and so on through the details of skin-texture, growth of hair and beard, quality of voice, gait, freedom of movement. All of these are traits that we take for granted as existing in a liberal preponderance among the members of a regiment, a club, or even a house-party, not to speak of the younger or older contingent at a cricket-match or in the crowd of a bank-holiday.

Now, after figuring out this type of a normally manly personality, inward and outward, the reader will please let his mind run over the list of his more intimate male acquaintance. How many of the men that he knows show a decided "working majority" of those traits, fundamental to a normal man' identity? Of the traits that are non-corporeal, how often do we find this or that Mend falling short! Add to the list other qualifications; the discrepancies become plainer. True self-reliance, aggressiveness, moral perspective, self-control, manly silence, the sense of trifles, as