MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE 133 



the magic of the emotions of Shelley and Poe, for instance, with 

 their marvelous music and exquisite intonings of feeling, furnish 

 us with important information. They are the facts of the sex 

 life, as much as the song of the nightingale, or the mocking 

 laughter of the cuckoo pursued by its mate. So Sappho and 

 Elizabeth Browning, to take only two samples, have contributed 

 some of the feminine reaction. The erotic motive in literature 

 has but paralleled the erotic motive in life, with all of its vaga- 

 ries, delusions, confusions, ecstasies and suffering. 



We have had concerning sex not knowledge, but a series of 

 attitudes, the attitude of virtue, the attitude of pruriency, the 

 attitude of good taste, the attitude of the theoretic libertine, the 

 attitude of the satyr's vulgarity. All these poses, of course, have 

 supplied not an iota to an understanding of the foundations of the 

 problems of sex, biologically considered. Thus, a masculine 

 master has coined that immortal phrase, the Eternal Feminine. 

 And in a matriarchate we should undoubtedly hear of the Eternal 

 Masculine. Each leaves one as unenlightened as the other. 

 A rough and ready code of life attributes certain grossly charac- 

 teristic qualities of mind and body to each sex. This is sup- 

 posed to be enough for common sense. Beyond that the mystery 

 has been wrapped in cotton wool. That perhaps explains the 

 enormous popularity of contemporary pornographic and so-called 

 sex literature. 



There are bound up with sex feeling and sex knowledge many 

 customs, beliefs and habits, many legal statutes and social insti- 

 tutions, in the complex that is called sentiment, to which science 

 looms as the sacrilegious ogre who devours romance. Without 

 spending space upon the ravages of the sentimental idealist, cer- 

 tainly responsible for as much human disaster as the brutal real- 

 ist, it is manifest that a revolution in sex standards and 

 relations is inevitable as soon as the new doctrines filter down 

 as matters of fact to the levels of the common intelligence. And 

 surely, nothing else could be wished for in the world desired by 

 all of us, the world ruled by intelligence, and intelligent good will. 



Sex Chemistry 



A few general statements may be put down outright as material 

 to go upon before we proceed to details. 



1. Femininity and masculinity have a definite chemical basis 

 in the reactions of the internal secretions of which they are the 



