Page:Symonds - A Problem in Modern Ethics.djvu/98

86 his pleading may be given, deduced from the comparative study of his numerous essays.

The right key to the solution of the problem is to be found in physiology, in that obscure department of natural science which deals with the evolution of sex. The embryo, as we are now aware, contains an undetermined element of sex during the first months of pregnancy. This is gradually worked up into male and female organs of procreation; and these, when the age of puberty arrives, are generally accompanied by corresponding male and female appetites. That is to say, the man in an immense majority of cases desires the woman, and the woman desires the man. Nature, so to speak, aims at differentiating the undecided fœtus into a human being of one or the other sex, the propagation of the species being the main object of life. Still, as Aristotle puts it, and as we observe in many of her operations, "Nature wishes, but has not always the power": ἡ φὑσις Βὁυλεται μἑν ἁλλ' οὑ δὑναται. Consequently in respect of physical structure, there come to light imperfect individuals, so-called hermaphrodites, whose sexual apparatus is so far undetermined that many a real male has passed a portion of his life under a mistake, has worn female clothes, and has cohabited by preference with men. Likewise, in respect of spiritual nature, there appear males who, notwithstanding their marked masculine organisation, feel from the earliest childhood a sexual proclivity toward men, with a corresponding indifference for women. In some of these abnormal, but natural, beings, the appetite for men resembles the normal appetite of men for women; in others it resembles the normal appetite of women for