Sex Part 1

s.e.x.

by Henry Stanton.

CHAPTER I

s.e.x

The happiness of all human beings, men and women, depends largely on their rational solution of the s.e.xual problem. s.e.x and the part it plays in human life cannot be ignored. In the case of animals s.e.x plays a simpler and less complex role. It is a purely natural and instinctive function whose underlying purpose is the perpetuation of the species. It is not complicated by the many incidental phenomena which result, in man's case, from psychologic, economic, moral and religious causes. Climate, social conditions, individual modes of life and work, alcohol, wealth and poverty, and other factors affect s.e.xual activity in human beings.

s.e.xual love, which is practically unknown to the animals, is a special development of the s.e.x urge in the human soul. The deeper purpose of the s.e.x function in human beings, likewise, is procreation, the reproduction of species.

The average man, woman and child should know the essential s.e.x facts in order to be able to deal with the s.e.x problems of life. Of late years there has been a greater diffusion of such knowledge. To a large extent, however, children and adolescents are still taught to look on all that pertains to s.e.x as something shameful and immodest, something not to be discussed. s.e.x is an "Avoided Subject."

This is fundamentally wrong. s.e.x affects the very root of all human life. Its activities are not obscene, but Nature's own means to certain legitimate ends. The s.e.x functions, when properly controlled and led into the proper channels, are a most essential and legitimate form of physical self-expression. The veil of secrecy with which they are so often shrouded tends to create an altogether false impression regarding them. This discussion of these "Avoided Subjects," in "Plain English," is intended to give the salient facts regarding s.e.x in a direct, straightforward manner, bearing in mind the true purpose of normal s.e.x activities.

The more we know of the facts of s.e.x, the right and normal part s.e.x activities play in life, and all that tends to abuse and degrade them, the better able we will be to make s.e.x a factor for happiness in our own lives and that of our descendants. Mankind, for its own general good, must desire that reproduction--the real purpose of every s.e.xual function--occur in such a way as to perpetuate its own best physical and mental qualities.

THE LAW OF PHYSICAL LIFE

It is a universal rule of physical life that every individual being undergoes a development which we know as its individual life and which, so far as its physical substance is concerned, ends with death.

Death is the destruction of the greater part of this individual organism which, when death ensues, once more becomes lifeless matter.

Only small portions of this matter, the germ cells, continue to live under certain conditions which nature has fixed.

The germ cell--as has been established by the microscope--is the tiny cell which in the lowest living organisms as well as in man himself, forms the unit of physical development. Yet even this tiny cell is already a highly organized and perfected thing. It is composed of the most widely differing elements which, taken together, form the so-called protoplasm or cellular substance. And for all life established in nature the cell remains the constant and unchanging form element. It comprises the cell-protoplasm and a nucleus imbedded in it whose substance is known as the nucleoplasm. The nucleus is the more important of the two and, so to say, governs the life of the cell-protoplasm.

The lower one-celled organisms in nature increase by division, just as do the individual cells of a more highly organized, many-celled order of living beings. And in all cases, though death or destruction of the cells is synonymous with the death or destruction of the living organism, the latter in most cases already has recreated itself by reproduction.

We will not go into the very complicated details of the actual process of the growth and division of the protoplasmic cells. It is enough to say that in the case of living creatures provided with more complicated organisms, such as the higher plants, animals and man, the little cell units divide and grow as they do in the case of the lower organisms. The fact is one which shows the intimate inner relations.h.i.+p of all living beings.

THE LADDER OF ORGANIC ASCENT

As we mount the ascending ladder of plant and animal life the unit-cell of the lower organisms is replaced by a great number of individual cells, which have grown together to form a completed whole.

In this complete whole the cells, in accordance with the specific purpose for which they are intended, all have a different form and a different chemical composition. Thus it is that in the case of the plants leaves, flowers, buds, bark, branches and stems are formed, and in that of animals skin, intestines, glands, blood, muscles, nerves, brain and the organs of sense. In spite of the complicated nature of numerous organisms we find that many of them still possess the power of reproducing themselves by division or a process of "budding." In the case of certain plants and animals, cell-groups grow together into a so-called "bud," which later detaches itself from the parent body and forms a new individual living organism, as in the case of the polyps or the tubers in plant life.

A tree, for instance, may be grown from a graft which has been cut off and planted in the ground. And ants and bees which have not been fecundated are quite capable of laying eggs out of which develop perfect, well-formed descendants. This last process is called parthenogenesis. It is a process, however, which if carried on through several generations, ends in deterioration and degeneracy. In the case of the higher animals, vertebrates and man, such reproduction is an impossibility.

These higher types of animal life have been provided by nature with special organs of reproduction and reproductive glands whose secretions, when they are projected from the body under certain conditions, reproduce themselves, and increase and develop in such wise that the living organism from which they proceed is reproduced in practically its identical form. Thus it perpetuates the original type.

Philosophically it may be said that these cells directly continue the life of the parents, so that death in reality only destroys a part of the individual. Every individual lives again in his offspring.

THE TRUE MISSION OF s.e.x

This rebirth of the individual in his descendants represents the true mission of s.e.x where the human being is concerned. And reproduction, the perpetuation of the species, underlies all rightful and normal s.e.x functions and activities. The actual physical process of reproduction, the details which initiate reproduction in the case of the human being, it seems unnecessary here to describe. In the animal world, into which the moral equation does not really enter, the facts of conjugation represent a simple and natural working-out of functional bodily laws, usually with a seasonal determination. But where man is concerned these facts are so largely made to serve the purposes of pruriency, so exploited to inflame the imagination in an undesirable and directly harmful way that they can be approached only with the utmost caution.

The intimate fact knowledge necessary in this connection is of a peculiarly personal and sacred nature, and represents information which is better communicated by the spoken than by the printed word.

The wise father and mother are those naturally indicated to convey this information to their sons and daughters by word of mouth. By a.n.a.logy, by fuller development and description of the reproductive processes of plant and animal life on which we have touched, the matter of human procreation may be approached. Parents should stress the point, when trying to present this subject to the youthful mind, that man's special functions are only a detail--albeit a most important one--in nature's vast plan for the propagation of life on earth. This will have the advantage of correcting a trend on the part of the imaginative boy or girl to lay too much stress on the part humanity plays in this great general reproductive scheme. It will lay weight on the fact that the functional workings of reproduction are not, primarily, a source of pleasure, but that--when safeguarded by the inst.i.tution of matrimony, on which civilized social life is based--they stand for the observance of solemn duties and obligations, duties to church and state, and obligations to posterity. Hence, parents, in talking to their children about these matters should do so in a sober and instructive fas.h.i.+on. The attention of a mother, perhaps, need not be called to this. But fathers may be inclined, in many cases, to inform their sons without insisting that the information they give them is, in the final a.n.a.lysis, intended to be applied to lofty constructive purposes. They may, in their desire to speak _practically_, forget the moral values which should underlie this intimate information. Never should the spirit of levity intrude itself in these intimate personal s.e.x colloquies. Restraint and decency should always mark them.

In making clear to the mind of youth the fact data which initiates and governs reproduction in animal and in human life, the ideal to be cultivated is continence, the refraining from all experimentation undertaken in a spirit of curiosity, until such time as a well-placed affection, sanctioned by the divine blessing, will justify a sane and normal exploitation of physical needs and urges in the matrimonial state. To this end hard bodily and mental work should be encouraged in the youth of both s.e.xes. "Satan finds work for idle hands to do," has special application in this connection, and a chaste and continent youth is usually the forerunner of a happy and contented marriage. And incidentally, a happy marriage is the best guarantee that reproduction, the carrying on of the species, will be morally and physically a success. Here, too, the fact should be strongly stressed that prost.i.tution cannot be justified on any moral grounds. It represents a deliberate ignoring of the rightful function of s.e.x, and the perversion of the sane and natural laws of reproduction. It is in marriage, in the sane and normal activities of that unit of our whole social system--the family--that reproduction develops nature's basic principle of perpetuation in the highest and worthiest manner, in obedience to laws humane and divine.

CHAPTER II

THE TRANSITION FROM CELL TO HUMAN BEING

In the functional processes alluded to in the preceding chapter, the male germ-cell and the female germ-cell unite in a practically equal division of substance. We say "practically" because the maternal and the paternal influences are not equally divided in the offspring. One or the other usually predominates. But, as a general rule, it may be said that in the development of the embryonal life the process of cell division proceeds in such a way that every germ of the child's future organism represents approximately one-half maternal and one-half paternal substance and energy.

In this process lies the true secret of heredity. The inherited energies retain their full measure of power, and all their original quality in the growing and dividing chromosomes (the chromosome is one of the segments into which the chromoplasmic filaments of a cell-nucleus break up just before indirect division). On the other hand, the egg-substance of the female germ-cell, which is a.s.similated by the chromosomes, and which is turned into _their_ substance by the process of organic chemistry, loses its specific plastic vital energy completely. It is in the same way that food eaten by the adult has absolutely no effect on his qualitative organic structure. We may eat ever so many beef-steaks without acquiring any of the characteristics of an ox. And the germ-cell may devour any amount of egg-protoplasma without losing its original paternal energy. As a rule a child inherits as many qualities from its mother as from its father.

DETERMINATION OF s.e.x

s.e.x is determined after conception has taken place. At an early stage of the embryo certain cells are set apart. These, later, form the s.e.x glands. Modern research claims to have discovered the secret of absolutely determining s.e.x in the human embryo, but even if these claims are valid they have not as yet met with any general application.

EARLY DEVELOPMENT

Some twelve days after conception, the female ovule or egg, which has been impregnated by the male spermatazoon, escapes from the ovary where it was impregnated, and entering a tube (Fallopian) gradually descends by means of it into the cavity of the womb or uterus. Here the little germ begins to mature in order to develop into an exact counterpart of its parents. In the human being the womb has only a single cavity, and usually develops but a single embryo.

TWINS

Sometimes two ovules are matured at the same time. If fecundated, two embryos instead of one will develop, producing twins. Triplets and quadruplets, the results of the maturing of three or four ovules at the same time, occur more rarely. As many as five children have been born alive at a single birth, but have seldom lived for more than a few minutes.

GESTATION

The development of the ovule in the womb is known as gestation or pregnancy. The process is one of continued cell division and growth, and while it goes on the ovule sticks to the inner wall of the womb.

There it is soon enveloped by a mucous membrane, which grows around it and incloses it.

THE EMBRYO

The _Primitive Trace_, a delicate straight line appearing on the surface of the growing layer of cells is the base of the embryonic spinal column. Around this the whole embryo develops in an intricate process of cell division and duplication. One end of the Primitive Trace becomes the head, the other the tail, for every human being has a tail at this stage of his existence. The neck is marked by a slight depression; the body by a swollen center. Soon little buds or "pads"

appear in the proper positions. These represent arms and legs, whose ends, finally, split up into fingers and toes. The embryonic human being has been steadily increasing in size, meanwhile. By the fifth week the heart and lungs are present in a rudimentary form, and ears and face are distinctly outlined. During the seventh week the kidneys are formed, and a little later the genital organs. At two months, though s.e.x is not determined as yet, eyes and nose are visible, the mouth is gaping, and the skin can be distinguished. At ten weeks the s.e.xual organs form more definitely, and in the third month s.e.x can be definitely determined.

THE FOETUS

At the end of its fourth month the embryo--now four or five inches long and weighing about an ounce--is promoted. It receives the name of foetus. Hairs appear on the scalp, the eyes are provided with lids, the tongue appears far back in the mouth. The movements of the foetus are plainly felt by the mother. If born at this time it lives but a few minutes. It continues to gain rapidly in weight. By the sixth month the nails are solid, the liver large and red, and there is fluid in the gall bladder. The seventh month finds the foetus from twelve and a half to fourteen inches long, and weighing about fifty-five ounces. It is now well proportioned, the bones of the cranium, formerly flat, are arched. All its parts are well defined, and it can live if born. By the end of the eighth month the foetus has thickened out. Its skin is red and covered by a delicate down; the lower jaw has grown to the same length as the upper one. The convolutions of the brain structure also appear during this month.

PLACENTA AND UMBILICAL CORD