101 



organic properties, and vice versa. We have experience of this 

 relation; we know that these sexual differences are bo h possessed 

 where one only acts. Now the next question is, what determines 

 one to act or to be latent, in preference to the other? 3rd. This 

 is a point which others have in effect conjectured upon ; it has been 

 attributed to imagination, operating sub coitu, as whether the idea 

 of man or woman was most prevalent, in a kind of contest which 

 took place between them. It has also been said that there are pre- 

 formed male and female ova, and the development of either deter- 

 mined the sex; and there are the conjectures of some microscopic 

 observers, which are reducible to the latter class. 



The former of these conjectures, viz. the prevalence of an in- 

 tellectual imago, or any other cause prevailing, strictly nub coitu, 

 is superfluous and inconsistent with analogy, for the sexual diffe- 

 rences take place in offsprings produced without coitus, by mere 

 impregnation of female ova, deposited in sand, or in the beds of 

 waters, as among fishes; besides which, the sexual differences are 

 preserved in animals which have no imaginations (at least we rind 

 no parts among them). The first fact, while it sufficiently refutes 

 the first conjecture, appears to indicate the truth of the second, viz. 

 that maternal ova are of two kinds, male and female; that which- 

 ever of these are impregnated, such is the sex. 



But this conjecture involves the suppositions, 1st, that the whole 

 business of determining the sex rests with the female; and, 2nd, 

 that the original can confer that of which itself has no prototype or 

 resemblance. Without stating the objections to these suppositions, 

 and without shewing how irreconcilable the first is with a whole 

 class of facts, and among others with those expressed at 104; we 

 will make shorter work of it by refuting at once the conjecture 

 itself, which is this, that the organic spirit of the organs of genera- 

 tion is furnished by the female universally, and that the male fur- 

 nishes no spiritual properties of this kind. Now the refutation of 

 this conjecture, and the establishment of its converse, which has 

 been all along supposed, also upon different grounds, are found in 

 this fact, that the generative organs, like all other parts, are modi- 

 fied by differences existing in both parents: thus the generative 

 organs of the products of a variety of the species are modified in 

 their development, as in the mule, &c. and do not resemble those 

 where the species is unmixed, as in the horse or the ass. And the 

 colour of the skin too is found to participate here in the general 

 deviation from that of either parent, as in the mulatto, with many 

 other facts of the same kind. 



Thus we see that notwithstanding the inconsistency of the sway 

 of both the sexual pre-dispositious, there are yet, even here, some 

 properties which do unite and modify each other, while others act 

 with an unchanged identity, and others remain latent, preserving 

 also, in a state of rest, their own nature. 



To return to the question, if we would know by what laws this 

 relation is governed, or what the variety of cause is which deter- 



