CHAPTER VI 



THE MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND THE 



FEMININE 



It needs a poet to chant the epic of sex. The mystery of it 

 puzzled the minds of the earliest Sumerian thinkers. As a 

 source of deepest excitement, it generated the most revolting 

 ceremonies, bizarre customs, astounding cruelties and incompre- 

 hensible stupidities of the race. Men and women, as soon as they 

 have done with their usual business of keeping themselves free 

 of disagreeable sensations, hunger, cold, fear of enemies, betake 

 themselves to it as a primary interest all over the world. The 

 most advanced psychologists of the day link the sex impulse 

 with the windings and twistings of all human activity. 



Yet the Homer of sex through the ages is still to come. But 

 at all times the mystery evoked speculation and attempt at 

 explanation. Acting upon their theories as to the nature and 

 function of sex, men have, ever since the passing of the primeval 

 matriarchates, segregated women, equalized them, worshipped 

 them, or enslaved them. Opinions have varied from ancient 

 national aphorisms to the effect that women have no souls to the 

 most ultramodern utterances of biologist-publicists that the dif- 

 ferences between men and women are the differences between two 

 species. There are other epigrams, vast sweeping generalities, 

 extant concerning the nature of sex, and women particularly. All 

 partake of the complexity of truth and therefore own a certain 

 validity. Still, since as a matter of fact, these items have been 

 based upon superficial observations colored by the tradition and 

 verbiage of the milieu, they are valuable more as human docu- 

 ments, as material for the psychologist, than as scientifically 

 obtained data, able to stand unblinking before the rays of the 

 critical searchlights. 



Science vs. Art 



Not that all the vast accumulation needs to be thrown pell-mell, 

 higgledy-piggledy into the discard. The love lyrics of the poet, 



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