Feminism; Women; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
Developments which, being in full agreement with one another and with
others, suggest that the two orders of Sex-characteristics (derived from
parents of opposite sex) are centred, respectively, in the two sides of
the body, and in the two brain-hemispheres allied, respectively, with
these. One side of the body, with its allied brain-half, represents the
paternal inherences of the individual; the other, the maternal. If so,
the right side of the body, with its allied Leading, or Dominant,
brain-half is, clearly, of male inherence. While the left side, with its
allied Recessive, or Dormant, brain-half is of female inherence.
The inference is further supported by the fact that the stronger right
side is rather larger and more masculine in form; while left-side limbs
are in normal right-handed persons, more slender and shapely and
delicate--in a word more womanly--than are those of the right.
As regards the face, from one aspect both sides are complete, from
another aspect both are incomplete, without the other. And in
configuration and expression, the two sides of the face differ
appreciably; the left side being more psychical, emotional and
subtle--in a word again more womanly.
In most persons, the hands and ears and eyes of one side differ from
those of the other, both in form and in function. In some persons the
differences are considerable. It happens occasionally, indeed, that the
eye of one side resembles in colour the eyes of one parent, while the
opposite eye bears the colour of those of the other parent.
Strange to say, there are, moreover, in the human male, organs concerned
with the strictly female function of lactation.
Indication of primæval human hermaphrodites formed one of Darwin's
greatest puzzles, indeed. In his _Descent of Man_, the following passage
occurs:
"It has been known that in the vertebrate Kingdom one sex bears
rudiments of various accessory parts appertaining to the
reproductive system, which properly belong to the other sex....
Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to
have been hermaphrodite, or androgynous."
It escaped him as it has escaped later biologists that Man, the highest
of the vertebrates, _is still androgynous_. And this inevitably so,
since, being of bi-sexual parentage, the sex-characteristics of both
parents must be present in him.
In _The Evolution of Sex_, Professors Geddes and Thomson state:
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