"all the numerous differences in form and function
which characterize sex among the higher animals, all
the so-called 'secondary sexual characters,' affecting
even the highest mental qualities of mankind, are
nothing but adaptations to bring about the union of the
hereditary tendencies of two individuals."
Nature has been at work on this problem of differentiating the sexes
ever since it created the lowest animal organisms, and this fact,
which stands firm as a rock, gives us the consoling assurance that the
present abnormal attempts to make women masculine by giving them the
same education, employments, sports, ideals, and political aspirations
as men have, must end in ignominious failure. If the viragoes had
their way, men and women would in course of time revert to the
condition of the lowest savages, differing only in their organs of
generation. How infinitely nobler, higher, more refined and,
fascinating, is that ideal which wants women to differ from men by
every detail, bodily and mental; to differ from them in the higher
qualities of disposition, of character, of beauty, physical and
spiritual, which alone make possible the existence of romantic love as
distinguished from lust on one side and friendship on the other.
MYSTERIES OF LOVE
If these secondary sexual characters could be destroyed by the
extraordinary--one might almost say criminal--efforts of unsexed
termagants to make all women ape men and become like them, romantic
love, which was so slow in coming, would disappear again, leaving only
sensual appetite, which may be (selfishly) fastidious and intense, but
has no depth, duration, or altruistic nobility, and which, when
satiated, cares no more for the object for which it had temporarily
hungered. It is these secondary sexual characters, with their subtle
and endless variations, that have given individual preference such a
wide field of choice that every lover can find a girl after his heart
and taste. A savage is like a gardener who has only one kind of
flowers to choose between--all of one color too; whereas we, with our
diverse secondary characters, our various intermixtures of
nationalities, our endless shades of blonde and brunette, and
differences in manners and education can have our choice among the
lilies, roses, violets, pansies, daisies, and thousands of other
flowers--or the girls named after them. Samuel Baker says there are no
broken hearts in Africa. Why should there be when individuals are so
similar that if a man loses his girl he can easily find another just
like her in color, face, rotundity, and grossness? A civilized lover
would mourn the loss of his bride--though he were offered his choice
of the beauties of Baltimore--because it would be _absolutely
impossible to duplicate her_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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