10 SEX 



thereby in anyway more tempted towards sin ? 

 Surely otherwise. While as to normal sex, 

 which essentially interests us here, and as 

 at heart and through life zoologists and 

 botanists, each and both of us, what harm 

 have we to tell of our simply or magnificently 

 sexed animals, our gloriously sexed flowers? 

 And coming to the human species, and to our 

 lifelong friends the painters, above all the 

 sculptors, who, beyond any of us, study life 

 naked and unashamed, have not these ex- 



Eressed for every age and generation, its 

 ighest ideals, human or divine? 

 WHAT SEX HAS MEANT IN THE PAST. There 

 might have been a world without sex a 

 parthenopeia of which we get a hint from 

 the swarming generations of green-flies on 

 our rose-bushes and hop-vines, which, all 

 the summer through, increase by virgin 

 birth, with not a single male to be seen till 

 the autumn. The question thus arises, Why 

 might not the organic world have been run 

 on sexless lines ? We shall see later on how 

 naturally sex arose in the early days, or rather 

 ages, of organic evolution, and that it has 

 ever been one of the conditions of progress. 

 Maternity itself would probably have ceased 

 if there had not been the love of mates. Strong 

 as is the vital impulse, it probably could not 

 have reached beyond a certain level had it 

 not evoked the deVice of sex, and thus renewed 

 its inspiration for the uplift of the type, as 

 well as encouragement, through a new life- 

 ecstasy, of its individuals. 



In mankind the fact of sex has saturated 

 through history. It is not improbable, as 



