gorged with blood
periodically, to provide an enriched soil for the perhaps to be
fertilized ovum to plant itself. The breasts grow, and fat is
deposited in particular places as reserve material for the making of
milk. The qualities which are to appeal to the eye and ear and even
nostrils of the male appear. Instincts dawn, an independence of spirit
germinates, emulsified with a curious shyness and coyness and a
desperate loneliness and secrecy. And all because there have been let
loose in the blood from the glands of internal secretion the chemical
substances that set going the clockwork of sequential incidents
elaborated and repeated through countless aeons of time.

FEMININE PRECOCITY

Ordinarily, in the north temperate climate, puberty begins about
the fourteenth year, but may begin anywhere from the tenth to the
sixteenth. Feeding and environment indirectly, the state of the
internal secretions as a whole directly, determine this. In girls,
those definite signs, menstruation and the growth of the breasts,
before the age of ten, mean premature awakening of the ovaries and a
concomitant co-reaction of the other endocrines, creating the ensemble
of maturity.

In females, the primary stimulus, the initial spark of femininity,
must originate in the ovary. There are other forms of precocity in the
female, dependent upon stimulations of other glands, but these forms
are masculinisms, a masculinization of the personality, and not a
true awakening of the feminine constitution. So one must distinguish
sharply between a precocity by masculinization and precocity of
premature feminization. The latter always implies the touch of the
fairy's wand upon the sleeping ovaries. Sexual precocity in boys may
be produced by a premature overactivity not only of the specific
reproductive organs: the testes, but also by an early excess of
secretion on the part of the cortex of the adrenal gland or the
pituitary gland, or by a too early involution of the pineal or thymus.
When such abnormalities of adrenal, pituitary, thymus or pineal occur
in girls, it is the masculine streak in the hastening of growth that
is made manifest. All this emphasizes the relative bisexuality of
every normal, no matter how pronounced, when superficially viewed, his
or her form of predominating sex may be. Under the right conditions
recession of the most marked virility or femininity becomes
conceivable, and occurs.

THE SECRET OF THE MASCULINE

Masculini