SECOND OR PRINCIPAL PART THE SEXUAL TYPES CHAPTER I MAN AND WOMAN “All that a man does is physiognomical of him.” CARLYLE. A free field for the investigation of the actual contrasts between the sexes is gained when we recognise that male and female, man and woman, must be considered only as types, and that the existing individuals, upon whose qualities there has been so much controversy, are mixtures of the types in different proportions. Sexually intermediate forms, which are the only actually existing individuals, were dealt with in a more or less schematic fashion in the first part of this book. Consideration of the general biological application of my theory was entered upon there; but now I have to make mankind the special subject of my investigation, and to show the defects of the results gained by the method of introspective analysis, as these results must be qualified by the universal existence of sexually intermediate conditions. In plants and animals the presence of hermaphroditism is an undisputed fact; but in them it appears more to be the juxtaposition of the male and female genital glands in the same individual than an actual fusion of the two sexes, more the co-existence of the two extremes than a quite neutral condition. In the case of human beings, however, it appears to be psychologically true that an individual, at least at one and the same moment, is always either man or woman. This is in harmony with the fact that each individual, whether superficially regarded as male or female, at once can recognise his sexual complement in another individual “woman” or “man.”[8] This uni-sexuality is demonstrated by the fact, the theoretical value of which can hardly be over-estimated, that, in the relations of two homo-sexual men one always plays the physical and psychical roll of the man, and in cases of prolonged intercourse retains his male first-name, or takes one, whilst the other, who plays the part of the woman, either assumes a woman’s name or calls himself by it, or--and this is sufficiently characteristic--receives it from the former. [8] I once heard a bi-sexual man exclaim, when he saw a bi-sexual actress with a slight tendency to a beard, a deep sonorous voice, and very little hair on her head, “There is a fine woman.” “Woman” means something different for every man or for every poet, and yet it is always the same, the sexual complement of their own constitution.