“Well,” he continued, “if the physical conditions of human rebirth are all determined by the karma of the will relating to physical conditions, then sex would be determined by the will in relation to sex. Now the will of either sex is towards the other. Above all things else, excepting life, man desires woman, and woman man. Each individual, moreover, independently of any personal relation, feels perpetually, you say, the influence of some inborn feminine or masculine ideal, which you call ‘a ghostly reflex of countless attachments in countless past lives.’ And the insatiable desire represented by this ideal would of itself suffice to create the masculine or the feminine body of the next existence.” “But most women,” I observed, “would like to be reborn as men; and the accomplishment of that wish would scarcely be in the nature of a penalty.” “Why not?” he returned. “The happiness or unhappiness of the new existence would not be decided by sex alone: it would of necessity depend upon many conditions in combination.” “Your theory is interesting,” I said;—“but I do not know how far it could be made to accord with accepted doctrine…. And what of the person able, through knowledge and practice of the higher law, to remain superior to all weaknesses of sex?” “Such a one,” he replied, “would be reborn neither as man nor as woman,—providing there were no pre-existent karma powerful enough to check or to weaken the results of the self-conquest.” “Reborn in some one of the heavens?” I queried,—“by the Apparitional Birth?” “Not necessarily,” he said. “Such a one might be reborn in a world of desire,—like this,—but neither as man only, nor as woman only.” “Reborn, then, in what form?” I asked. “In that of a perfect being,” he responded. “A man or a woman is scarcely more than half-a-being,—because in our present imperfect state either sex can be evolved only at the cost of the other. In the mental and the physical composition of every man, there is undeveloped woman; and in the composition of every woman there is undeveloped man. But a being complete would be both perfect man and perfect woman, possessing the highest faculties of both sexes, with the weaknesses of neither. Some humanity higher than our own,—in other worlds,—might be thus evolved.” “But you know,” I observed, “that there are Buddhist texts,—in the _Saddharma Pundarîka_, for example, and in the _Vinayas_,—which forbid….” “Those texts,” he interrupted, “refer to imperfect beings—less than man and less than woman: they could not refer to the condition that I have been supposing…. But, remember, I am not preaching a doctrine;—I am only hazarding a theory.” “May I put your theory some day into print?” I asked. “Why, yes,” he made answer,—“if you believe it worth thinking about.” And long afterwards I wrote it down thus, as fairly as I was able, from memory. Ingwa-banashi[1]