Ryder.] 136 [May 16> 



the female is merely a retarded stage of the development of the male may 

 be correlated with the singular and suggestive contrasts between the egg 

 and spermatozoon. 



The evolution of sex and the evolution of sexual love or passion are 

 inextricably intertwined. The history of the one is the history of the 

 other. There are many reasons leading to the conclusion that the earliest 

 and lower forms of sexuality were never in the past and are not now 

 impelled to conjugate by anything akin to the gratification of passion 

 such as is met with amongst the higher series of animal forms. Sexual 

 passion is the outgrowth of a gradually developed and increased capacity 

 for experiencing pleasurable sensations by the parent body or soma which 

 is the producer or bearer of the sexual products. The high specialization 

 of the sexual processes in higher forms has also unfortunately led to the 

 possibility of their perversion. No sexual perversion is possible amongst 

 lower forms where the essence of sexuality is the mere concrescence or 

 conjugation of sexual cells. Courtship, violence towards and pursuit 

 of the female, sexual love, etc., are the consequences of the evolution of 

 a soma or parent body, which is the mere carrier of germ-cells, but which 

 is capable of experiencing exquisite pleasure in the consummation of the 

 sexual act. 



The intromission of an erectile organ covered with highly sensitive ner- 

 vous end-organs into the genital passages of the female is the appetency 

 for the sexual elements to conjugate reflected upon the soma. Copulation 

 and the development of erectile or other sensitive intromittent and recip- 

 rocally coadapted primary sexual organs must have been due to the effect 

 of use, since disuse, as in castration, affects the development of the 

 parts, while abnormal activity, under favorable conditions, is said to 

 increase their development. This view is sustained by the evidence in both 

 plants and animals ; in both the devices for effecting conjugation of the 

 sexual elements and developed in the most gradual manner, until, in 

 plants, the pollen-grains, with the help of various secondary adaptations, 

 such as their morphological development, insect agency, the wind, etc., 

 are evolved into true intromittent organs answering to the function of a 

 penis in the form of a growing pollen-tube, stimulated to growth by nutri- 

 ment supplied by the stigma and carrying the very minute, elongate, male 

 chromatin element in its very narrow passage to the ovicell of the ovary. In 

 the same way the male intromittent organs of animals have been developed 

 from a mere cloacal papilla, or a low-grooved fleshy erectile process to a 

 highly differentiated and excessively complex penis with, in some cases, an 

 elaborate series of rosettes and flanges covered with a thin integument with 

 highly sensitive terminal sensory nerves, that are in reflex connection 

 with the higher parts of the sensorium and through the lumbar region 

 of the spinal cord with the testes, spermatic vesicles and accelerator 

 urinse and other muscles which they may throw into spasmodic contrac- 

 tions in order to compress the vesiculoe and cause the emission of the male 

 elements in the act of coition. Similar actions result in the female which 



