Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/214

202 as the uniformity of thought among men is due to the uniform operation of the external senses, as they think alike because they have the same number and kind of senses, so the uniformity of their fundamental passions is due probably to the uniform operation of the internal organs of the body upon the brain; they feel alike because they have the same number and kind of internal organs. If this be so, these organs come to be essential constituents of our mental life.

The most striking illustration of the kind of organic action which I am endeavoring to indicate, is yielded by the influence of the reproductive organs upon the mind; a complete mental revolution being made when they come into activity. As great a change takes place in the feelings and ideas, the desires and will, as it is possible to imagine, and takes place in virtue of the development of their functions. Let it be noted, then, that this great and important mental change is different in the two sexes, and reflects the difference of their respective organs and functions. Before experience has opened their eyes, the dreams of a young man and maiden differ. If we give attention to the physiology of the matter, we see that it cannot be otherwise, and if we look to the facts of pathology, which would not fitly be in place here, they are found to furnish the fullest confirmation of what might have been predicted. To attribute to the influence of education the mental differences of sex which declare themselves so distinctly at puberty, would be hardly less absurd than to attribute to education the bodily differences which then declare themselves. The comb of a cock, the antlers of a stag, the mane of a lion, the beard of a man, are growths in relation to the reproductive organs which correlate mental differences of sex as marked almost as these physical differences. In the first years of life, girls and boys are much alike in mental and bodily character, the differences which are developed afterward being hardly more than intimated, although some have thought the girl's passion for her doll evinces even at that time a forefeeling of her future functions; during the period of reproductive activity, the mental and bodily differences are declared most distinctly; and when that period is past, and man and woman decline into second childhood, they come to resemble one another more again. Furthermore, the bodily form, the voice, and the mental qualities of mutilated men approach those of women; while women whose reproductive organs remain from some cause in a state of arrested development, approach the mental and bodily habits of men.

No psychologist has yet devoted himself to make, or has succeeded in making, a complete analysis of the emotions, by resolving the complex feelings into their simple elements and tracing them back from their complex evolutions to the primitive passions in which they are rooted; this is a promising and much-needed work which remains to be done; but, when it is done, it will be shown probably that they have proceeded originally from two fundamental instincts, or—if we add