THE FACTORS WHICH DETERMINE SEX 655 



the differentiation of the original protoplasm into arrhenoplasm 

 and thelyplasm, but his idea, though somewhat too morpholo- 

 gically conceived, is useful if only because it emphasises the 

 fact that male and female characters coexist (though they are 

 very unequally represented) in most if not in all dioecious in- 

 dividuals that is to say, that such individuals are rarely, if 

 ever, wholly male or wholly female. ' There may be conceived," 

 he tells us, " for every cell all conditions, from complete 

 masculinity through stages of diminishing masculinity to its 

 complete absence and the consequent presence of uniform 

 femininity/* 



Weininger draws special attention to the gradations in 

 sexual characters which exist among men and women. There 

 are many men, he remarks, with a poor growth of beard and 

 a weak muscular development, who are otherwise typically 

 males ; and so also there are women with ill-developed breasts 

 who in other respects are typical females. There exist all 

 transitional forms from the most masculine male to the most 

 effeminate male, and on the other side, from the Sapphist and the 

 virago to the most feminine female ; but in Man the characters 

 of one sex are always dominant, though the degree of dominance 

 varies through considerable limits. On this view, the phenomena 

 of so-called sexual inversion and homosexuality, which are 

 ordinarily regarded as purely pathological, are in reality psycho- 

 logical manifestations of special characters belonging to the 

 recessive sex. 1 



It is usual to regard the sex of an animal as being contributed 

 by the essential reproductive organs, while the effect of re- 

 moving these organs points to the conclusion that they exercise 

 by means of their internal secretions a very powerful influence 

 over the entire organism and more particularly over those char- 

 acters the development of which is ordinarily correlated with 



1 For further information see Krafft-Ebing, Psycliopathia Sexualis, 

 Stuttgart, 1882 ; Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex : Sexual 

 Inversion, Philadelphia, 1901 ; Forel, The Sexual Question, English Transla- 

 tion, London, 1908 ; and Bloch, The Sexual Life of our Tim, English 

 Translation, London, 1908. For a discussion on the distinctions between 

 men and women, see Manouvrier, " Conclusions generates sur 1'Anthropologie 

 des Sexes et Applications sociales," Rev. de VEcole d 1 Anthropologie de Paris, 

 1909. 



