CHAPTER VII 

 THE RHYTHMS OF SEX 



If one permits a drop of ink to fall into a glass of water, 

 amazing figures and shapes, bizarre and chameleon, are born as 

 the blue swirls and whirls through the resisting medium. Unseen 

 forces and currents, tides and pressures, set up a seething and 

 flowing, pulling and twisting of the drop of ink until it becomes 

 a strange wraith created out of the molecules, A temporary 

 individuality lives in the water. 



So likewise the forces of sex, essentially the forces of the inter- 

 nal secretions, mould and sculpt and mould again the woman out 

 of the flesh and blood. Adolescence — puberty — menstruation: 

 the maid, — pregnancy — labor — lactation: the matron, thirty 

 years of ups and downs of these processes around the idea of 

 love or suppressed love, against an aesthetic background of some 

 sort — and finally the loss of the stress and strain of sex, the 

 menopause. All the landmarks of the life of woman, in their 

 entirety, are erected and dominated by the tides and currents, 

 the phases of concentration and dilution, of the different internal 

 secretions in the endocrine mixture which is the blood. 



Marvelous are all the manifestations of the reproductive neces- 

 sity. Considering that reproduction was at first merely a form 

 of growth, a discontinuous kind of growth, that seized upon sex 

 as a splendid means to escape death, the chemical methods 

 evolved arouse a sense of awe. A baby is born with her or his 

 glands practically as fixed for her or him as the color of the eyes. 

 Thymus and pineal keep him a child, keep him unsexed. Then 

 at puberty, a new current is added to the calmly flowing river, 

 and behold! a turmoil. Ovaries or testes actively functioning 

 erupt upon the calm spectacle, and the girl is transfigured into the 

 maid, the boy into the youth. After the ovaries, the corpus 

 luteum: after the corpus luteum, the placenta: after the pla- 

 centa, the mammary glands: after that the cycle begins again 

 until the ovaries are exhausted and the chain is broken. Besides, 

 all the other glands of internal secretion beat in rhythm, fluc- 



149 



