MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE 141 



Feminine Precocity 



Ordinarily, in the north temperate climate, puberty begins 

 about the fourteenth year, but may begin anywhere from the 

 tenth to the sixteenth. Feeding and environment indirectly, the 

 state of the internal secretions as a whole directly, determine 

 this. In girls, those definite signs, menstruation and the growth 

 of the breasts, before the age of ten, mean premature awakening 

 of the ovaries and a concomitant co-reaction of the other endo- 

 crines, creating the ensemble of maturity. 



In females, the primary stimulus, the initial spark of femininity, 

 must originate in the ovary. There are other forms of precocity 

 in the female, dependent upon stimulations of other glands, but 

 these forms are masculinisms, a masculinization of the person- 

 ality, and not a true awakening of the feminine constitution. So 

 one must distinguish sharply between a precocity by masculiniza- 

 tion and precocity of premature feminization. The latter always 

 implies the touch of the fairy's wand upon the sleeping ovaries. 

 Sexual precocity in boys may be produced by a premature over- 

 activity not only of the specific reproductive organs: the testes, 

 but also by an early excess of secretion on the part of the cortex 

 of the adrenal gland or the pituitary gland, or by a too early 

 involution of the pineal or thymus. When such abnormalities of 

 adrenal, pituitary, thymus or pineal occur in girls, it is the mas- 

 culine streak in the hastening of growth that is made manifest. 

 All this emphasizes the relative bisexuality of every normal, no 

 matter how pronounced, when superficially viewed, his or her 

 form of predominating sex may be. Under the right conditions 

 recession of the most marked virility or femininity becomes 

 conceivable, and occurs. 



The Secret of the Masculine 



Masculinization having entered upon the scene, one may well 

 ask: what truly (which means chemically) lies behind all these 

 differences and divergences between male and female? What is 

 the secret of the variable internal secretion admixtures? You can 

 tell us that the recipes are different, the ingredients different, the 

 results different as a Nesselrode pudding is from, say, a rice 

 pudding. But what is the inner mechanism of the process? Since 

 the masculine and the feminine are but expressions of certain 



