THE NATURAL 



side and a purse stuffed inside; a female foetus resembles 

 a male foetus, so as to deceive anyone; the part which 

 occasions the error, sinks in the female foetus in measure 

 as the purse extends inward; it is never obliterated to 

 the point of losing its primitive form; it also is the mover 

 of pleasure, it has its gland, its foreskin, and one notes 

 at its extremity a point which appears to have been the 

 orifice of a urinary canal which has closed; there is in 

 man from the anus to the scrotum, the interval called 

 the perinaeum, and from the scrotum to the end of the 

 prong, a seam which looks like the resewing of a basted 

 vulva; women with excessive clitoris, have beards, eunuchs 

 have not, their thighs increase, their hips widen, their 

 knees round out, and in losing the characteristic organ- 

 ization of one sex they seem to return to the character- 

 istic conformity of the other. ..." In terms less 

 literary, one considers as homologous, in man and 

 woman, the ovary and the testicle, lesser labia, clitoridian 

 cap and sheath, the hanging foreskin; the greater labia 

 and the envelope of the scrotum; clitoris and penis; the 

 vagina and the prostatic utricle. One will find the de- 

 tails of these analogies in special works, they can not 

 be given here with scientific precision. The sole point 

 to hold on to is that the two sexes not only in man r 

 and not only in mammifers, but in nearly all the animal 

 and vegetable series, are but a repetition of the same 

 creature with specialization of function. This special- 

 ization may extend to functions other than sexual, to 

 work (bees, ants) to war (termites). The soldier termite 

 is extraordinary; he is not more so than the male. 

 The sexual parallelism is constant among nearly all 

 66 



