The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human NatureBerman, Louis
History
The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human Nature
Berman, Louis
Endocrinology; Personality
There are bound up with sex feeling and sex knowledge many customs,
beliefs and habits, many legal statutes and social institutions, in
the complex that is called sentiment, to which science looms as the
sacrilegious ogre who devours romance. Without spending space upon the
ravages of the sentimental idealist, certainly responsible for as much
human disaster as the brutal realist, it is manifest that a revolution
in sex standards and relations is inevitable as soon as the new
doctrines filter down as matters of fact to the levels of the common
intelligence. And surely, nothing else could be wished for in the
world desired by all of us, the world ruled by intelligence, and
intelligent good will.
SEX CHEMISTRY
A few general statements may be put down outright as material to go
upon before we proceed to details.
1. Femininity and masculinity have a definite chemical basis in the
reactions of the internal secretions of which they are the expression.
That is to say, that just as a precipitate of chalk is formed when one
throws some carbonate of soda into lime water, so the masculine
and the feminine are to be looked upon as precipitates and
crystallizations of a long series of linked chemical reactions in
the fluids of the body, in which the internal secretions play a
determining part.
2. Femininity and masculinity are expressions of the interplay of all
the internal secretions. It used to be said by smart cats and accepted
by the tabby cats, that a woman was a woman because of her ovaries
alone. It is being said by some great discoverers of the day that man
is a man because of his testes alone. Neither of these dogmas is true.
There are individuals with ovaries who show every deviation from the
feminine and there are individuals with testes who exhibit every
variation from the masculine. The other endocrine glands are of equal
importance.
3. There is no absolute masculine or absolute feminine. The ideals
of the Manly Man and the Womanly Woman were erected by the blind
ignorance of the nineteenth century illusionists, and a line drawn to
cleave them. But indeed biologically there exists every transition
between the masculine and the feminine. The explanation of these
different sex types consists in the different admixtures of the
internal secretions possible and actual. When we speak of the feminine
we really mean the predominantly feminine. And when we speak of
the masculine, we mean the mainly masculine. Between, all sorts of
transitions are possible and occur.
Man in relation to the internal secretions we have considered in
reviewing the interstitial cells. To him, we shall return later. Let
us turn now to that fascinating subject of the ages, Woman. What
produces and maintains the Feminine?
THE CAUSE OF SEX
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