“I find it therefore necessary to assume the existence in Nature of masculine and feminine elements. =That man is nearest perfection who is composed entirely of masculine elements, and that woman perhaps is nearest perfection who contains only so many feminine elements as to be able to remain woman; whilst that man is the worst who contains only so many masculine elements as to qualify for the title of man.=” Magnus Hirschfeld, to whom this noteworthy passage in Heinse’s book appears to be unknown, has recently, in his valuable monographs, “Sexual Stages of Transition” (Leipzig, 1905) and “The Nature of Love” (Leipzig, 1906), thoroughly investigated these relations, and quotes, among others, sayings of Darwin and Weismann, according to which the latent presence of opposite sexual characters in every sexually differentiated bion must be regarded as a normal arrangement. Unquestionably the widely diffused phenomenon of “psychical hermaphroditism,” or “spiritual bisexuality,” is connected with the physical facts just enumerated, and provides us with the key for the understanding of the nature of homosexuality. Both these states--the physical and the mental--may be referred to primitive conditions of sexuality. They cannot play any serious part in the future course of human evolution, of which the progressive differentiation of the sexes is so marked a characteristic. In contrast with this differentiation, these rudimentary sexual conditions are practically devoid of significance. Suggestion, indeed, the influence of momentary tendencies of the time and of transient mental states, may temporarily deceive us. And when, for example, Hirschfeld maintains that in the central nervous system of women the more masculine, rational qualities, and in the central nervous system of men the more feminine, emotional qualities, are respectively on the increase, we must answer, in the first place, that this is not generally true, and, in the second place, that, in so far as it is true, it is a passing phenomenon, which has already provoked a powerful reaction in the =opposite= direction.[13] The exuviæ of a dead condition cannot again be vitalized. The original purpose of the organs of sexual congress is, then, to safeguard and to facilitate, in the more complicated conditions peculiar to multicellular organisms, the conjugation of the two reproductive cells. They do not exist, as Eduard von Hartmann assumes, as a mere lure to voluptuousness, to induce man to continue the practice of sexual congress, purely instinctive in his animal ancestors, but now endangered by the development of the higher type of consciousness. For animals without organs of sexual congress also experience a voluptuous sensation at the instant of the sexual orgasm and of procreation.