THE NATURAL 



erotic humanity. Facing this light from animal habits, 

 debauchery loses all character and all its tang, because 

 it loses all immorality. Man, who unites in himself the 

 aptitudes of all the animals, all their laborious instincts, 

 all their industries, could not escape the heritage of their 

 sexual methods; and there is no lewdness which has not 

 its normal type in nature, somewhere. 



Before leaving this repugnant milieu, one may still 

 consider the leech. Hermaphrodite, they also practice 

 reciprocal fecundation, but the position of their organs 

 compels them to assume a peculiar position: the prong 

 emerges from a pore near the mouth ; the vagina is above 

 the anus. The copulation of these wretched animals 

 forms, therefore, a head-to-tail, the bocal sucker coin- 

 ciding with the anal sucker. 



Animals having both sexes, do not necessarily show 

 sexual dimorphism. But neither this exact likeness of 

 individuals, nor the double function with which they are 

 charged, contradicts the general law which seems to wish 

 that an individual should be due to elements coming from 

 two different individuals. Autofecundation is exceptional, 

 is very rare. Whether or no the individual possess the 

 two genital glands, or one of them only, it needs a male, 

 or an individual acting as male, and a female or an indi- 

 vidual acting as female, to perpetuate life. Alternative 

 hermaphrodism confirms these propositions, be it that 

 the same gland transforms itself totally, turn by turn, 

 into male principle, then into female principle; be it 

 divided between a male half and a female half, these two 

 halves ripen simultaneously or successively. When there 

 is total or partial alternation, the male principle is ready 

 no 



