132 WHAT IS LIFE? 



The ancients seemed to be aware of this influence ; 

 thus, "The Greek women placed statues of Apollo or 

 Narcissus in their bedrooms, that they might bear 

 children as beautiful as those on whom they gazed. 

 Such children they prayed the gods to give them ; for 

 the Greeks loved beauty to distraction, and regarded 

 ugliness as sin." l 



A serious question also arises thus. If fertilization 

 is not absolutely necessary in lower organisms, is it also 

 absolutely and invariably necessary in the higher 

 organisms ? If the egg could develop under normal 

 conditions, that is, in the womb without fertilization, 

 who could possibly believe the result ? And yet eggs 

 are known to develop to almost perfect creatures in 

 other parts of the body than the womb, the inherent 

 power to develop to a mature creature being arrested 

 solely by the external conditions being unsuitable to 

 permit such development. Thus eggs are in rare cases 

 developed to a very great extent in the body of the 

 human male under conditions which seem to preclude 

 fertilization. 



Two remarkable cases of this sort exist in the College 

 of Surgeons* Museum. One is of great interest. It is 

 that of a young man about sixteen years of age bearing 

 a female foetus. And this is not such an uncommon 

 case, 2 Such cannot be a case of " true " twins, that is 

 two individuals developing from one egg or ovum,, 

 where part of the egg has remained dormant in the body 

 of the male, and then suddenly began (in the case cited), 

 after sixteen years lying dormant, to develop and try to 



1 " The Martyrdom of Man," Winwood Reade, 13fch edition, 1890,. 

 p. 73. 



2 See the Standard newspaper, February 27th and 29th, 1896. 



