Developments which, being in full agreement with one another and with others, suggest that the two orders of Sex-characteristics (derived from parents of opposite sex) are centred, respectively, in the two sides of the body, and in the two brain-hemispheres allied, respectively, with these. One side of the body, with its allied brain-half, represents the paternal inherences of the individual; the other, the maternal. If so, the right side of the body, with its allied Leading, or Dominant, brain-half is, clearly, of male inherence. While the left side, with its allied Recessive, or Dormant, brain-half is of female inherence.
The inference is further supported by the fact that the stronger right side is rather larger and more masculine in form; while left-side limbs are in normal right-handed persons, more slender and shapely and delicate—in a word more womanly—than are those of the right.
As regards the face, from one aspect both sides are complete, from another aspect both are incomplete, without the other. And in configuration and expression, the two sides of the face differ appreciably; the left side being more psychical, emotional and subtle—in a word again more womanly.
In most persons, the hands and ears and eyes of one side differ from those of the other, both in form and in function. In some persons the differences are considerable. It happens occasionally, indeed, that the eye of one side resembles in colour the eyes of one parent, while the opposite eye bears the colour of those of the other parent.
Strange to say, there are, moreover, in the human male, organs concerned with the strictly female function of lactation.
Indication of primæval human hermaphrodites formed one of Darwin's greatest puzzles, indeed. In his Descent of Man, the following passage occurs:
"It has been known that in the vertebrate Kingdom one sex bears rudiments of various accessory parts appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong to the other sex.... Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to have been hermaphrodite, or androgynous."
It escaped him as it has escaped later biologists that Man, the highest of the vertebrates, is still androgynous. And this inevitably so, since, being of bi-sexual parentage, the sex-characteristics of both parents must be present in him.
In The Evolution of Sex, Professors Geddes and Thomson state:
"Sometimes a fish is male on one side, female on the other, or male anteriorly and female posteriorly.... Among invertebrates the same has been occasionally observed, especially among butterflies, where striking differences in the colouring of the wings on the two sides have in some cases been found to correspond to an internal co-existence of ovary and testes.... The prettiest cases of superficial hermaphrodism occur among insects, especially among moths and butterflies, where it often happens that the wings on one side are those of the male, on the other, those of the female."
II
Despite the fact that Nature has evolved the complex human races from the single-celled microscopic amœba ("Protoplasmic father of Man," as science has styled this), there are those who regard it as another of numerous blunders on the part of the Great Mother that the left side of the body is a more or less passive and powerless member. Accordingly, the doctrine of Ambidextry has arisen. With the result that its wiser exponents have abandoned it. Because it has been found that children trained on Ambidextrous lines develop neurotic symptoms. This occurs even in cases in which children naturally left-handed are taught to use the right hand, as is normal.
In a lecture given before The Child-Study Society in London, Mr. P. B. Ballard, London County-Council Inspector of Schools, stated that left-handed bowlers send down the ugliest balls, left-handed boxers deal the most unexpected blows—blows that hurt terribly. To be left-handed, it seemed, was to be not merely awkward, but to be wicked, moreover. Yet any attempt to interfere with a child's natural habit is liable to make him stammer. (The evil bent of left-handed persons has a special significance in view of my hypothesis of the dissimilar mental functions of the two brain-hemispheres. The term "sinister" expresses this bent. The inference is that in such transposition of the normal functions of the brain-halves, the tempering and humanising influence of the Woman-half is counteracted.)
Of a group of 545 left-handed children, 1 per cent. of pure left-handers stammered, against 4·3 per cent, of 399, in course of being taught to use the right hand, Mr. Ballard further stated. In another group of 207, the figures were 4·2 per cent, and 21·8 per cent. respectively. Six out of ten left-handed children who had been taught to use the right hand were practically cured of stammering after having been allowed to use the left hand exclusively for eighteen months. There are twice as many left-handed boys as left-handed girls; and stammering is twice as prevalent among boys.
All of which indicates normal differences in function of the two sides of the body—differences suggesting that, as I have surmised, each is the site and the agency of a principle totally unlike that of the other.
III
Upon referring to Biology—on the processes whereof every development, both physical and psychical, of living creatures rests—this curious dual constitution of the body, together with the problems of dual sex-transmission and inherency, become explicable.
And the solutions are at the same time so simple and inevitable as to be the strongest possible confirmation of my thesis.
As already stated, living organisms, offspring of two parents, derive half the source of their structure from one parent, half from the other.
All plants and living creatures evolve their organisation from a single microscopic cell, precisely as Life itself evolved primarily, and has developed out of the single-celled, microscopic amœba. The microscopic cell which develops into a living creature is composed thus of two halves, or "gametes," to employ the scientific term. One half was contributed by the father: the other, by the mother. The two have united to form a whole cell. From such a cell (zygote), half male, half female, the body of every living organism has sprung.
Now, although these two half-cells unite to form a whole cell, exchange constituents, and appear to lose their identity each in the other, it is, in the face of the strange dual constitution of the body, difficult to doubt that each half actually retains its identity and sex-inherences, and develops along its own lines (albeit in close correlation with the other), throughout all the marvellous, intricate, and complex processes of embryological existence, during which the zygote is evolving into a living creature, capable of separate and individual life. And the inherences of these two halves are represented, at birth, in the respective sides of the body; each being, as it were, a complete and perfect entity, although inseparably knit in one flesh to its twin. And throughout all the further intricate and complex processes whereby the creature comes to maturity, lives, reproduces its species, and dies, each half preserves its individual inherence alike in constitution and in function. And yet in the mystical unity of their commingling duality, they are one flesh.
Each of the parental half-cells contained, marvellously, the potential moiety of a living personality. But either, alone, would have been but an incomplete and valueless thing, had it not become united with the complementary half-cell required to complete it structurally, and to engender and energise its potentialities. Nevertheless, throughout all the immature and the mature phases of life, from conception to birth, and from birth onward to death, the opposite sides of the body represent normally the opposite sex-inherences of their respective parents. They are, in humans, the Man and the Woman—two in one—that exist in every living man and woman. They represent contrary principles; they perform different functions; they engender and energise dissimilar processes. One is the centre of the Male characteristics, Dominant upon the material plane; the other, of the Female characteristics, Recessive thereon.
Normality and health are the mean and balance, in the individual, of the complementary and supplementary functions and processes of the opposite sex-inherences of his, or her, body. Precisely as in the social economy the complementary and supplementary rôles of men and women counterpoise the