thyroid and ovarian superiority, is
constructed for submission. Reverse the possibilities, or confuse
them, as occurs in the functional hermaphrodite, and the attitudes
become reversed or perverted. So a masculinoid personality in woman
will make for sadism, a feminoid personality in a man for masochism.
Variants and refinements of these perversions will often be found
in the functional hermaphrodite who must satisfy two doubly flowing
streams of visceral pressure within himself. Persistence of the thymus
or pineal gland tends to a prolongation of the infantile and child
types, that will be taken advantage of.

CHAPTER VII

THE RHYTHMS OF SEX

If one permits a drop of ink to fall into a glass of water, amazing
figures and shapes, bizarre and chameleon, are born as the blue swirls
and whirls through the resisting medium. Unseen forces and currents,
tides and pressures, set up a seething and flowing, pulling and
twisting of the drop of ink until it becomes a strange wraith created
out of the molecules. A temporary individuality lives in the water.

So likewise the forces of sex, essentially the forces of the internal
secretions, mould and sculpt and mould again the woman out of
the flesh and blood. Adolescence--puberty--menstruation: the
maid,--pregnancy--labor--lactation: the matron, thirty years of ups
and downs of these processes around the idea of love or suppressed
love, against an aesthetic background of some sort--and finally the
loss of the stress and strain of sex, the menopause. All the landmarks
of the life of woman, in their entirety, are erected and dominated by
the tides and currents, the phases of concentration and dilution, of
the different internal secretions in the endocrine mixture which is
the blood.

Marvelous are all the manifestations of the reproductive necessity.
Considering that reproduction was at first merely a form of growth, a
discontinuous kind of growth, that seized upon sex as a splendid means
to escape death, the chemical methods evolved arouse a sense of awe.
A baby is born with her or his glands practically as fixed for her or
him as the color of the eyes. Thymus and pineal keep him a child, keep
him unsexed. Then at puberty, a new current is added to the calmly
flowing river, and behold! a turmoil. Ovaries or testes actively
functioning erupt upon the calm spectacle, and the girl is
transfigured into the maid, the boy into the youth. After the ovaries,
the corpus luteum