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THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
* What I was is passed by. 
 What I am away doth fly : 
 What I shall be none do see, 
 Yet in That my beauties be,* 
 
THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 OR 
 
 THE FEMALE INTELLECT IN MAN, 
 AND THE MASCULINE IN WOMAN 
 
 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND 
 
 F.R.L.S., A.M. Harvard 
 Member of the American Philosophical Society, etc. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 •*KULOSKAP, THE MASTER, AND OTHER ALGONQUIN POEMS 
 
 AND LEGENDS," ** HAVE YOU A STRONG WILL?" 
 
 "THE BREITMANN BALLADS," ETC. 
 
 NKW YORK 
 
 FUNK & WAGNAI,I,S COMPANY 
 1904 
 
TO THE READER 
 
 This work was completed only a few months 
 before Mr. Leland*s death, and on this account 
 it is presented to the public without the benefit 
 of the author's revision and correction. 
 
 Mrs. Joseph Pennell, the niece of the late 
 Mr. Leland, has kindly seen the book through 
 the press. 
 
 Copyright, 1904 
 
 BY 
 
 PHII.IP WEIylvBY 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured in this book to set forth the 
 following views : 
 
 That Men and Women are, in strict accordance 
 with the opinion of the most recent physiologists, 
 radically different as regards both body and mind, 
 although social or domestic life has given them 
 much in common. 
 
 That in proportion to the female organs remain- 
 ing in man, and the male in woman, there exists 
 also in each just so much of their peculiar mental 
 characteristics. 
 
 That this female mind in man, having free access 
 to the images stored in the cells of memory, calls 
 them forth in dreams and reveries, the same being 
 true as regards the masculine mind in woman. 
 
 That this casts much light on the true nature 
 of the Imagjjiation^ and all creative action of the 
 mind, involving originality, as is explained in 
 detail in the text. 
 
 That what has of late years occupied much 
 thought as the Subhminal Self, the Inner Me, the 
 Hidden Soul, Unconscious Cerebration, and the 
 like, may all be reduced to or fully explained by 
 the Alternate Sex in us. 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 That there is no line of demarcation between 
 the organic and inorganic world ; that, as shown 
 by Schron, there is life in crystals, and no step in 
 which mentality, though in lower forms, does not 
 manifest itself. 
 
 That Forces have developed themselves from a 
 primary force, and that there are some of which 
 we are as yet ignorant. 
 
 That the law of Growth is that of accretion, or 
 of attraction and repulsion, beginning with any 
 chance group of molecules, guided by certain forces., 
 as seen in advanced organisms. 
 
 That Sensivity is a Force developed at first by 
 polarization of atoms, increased by attraction 
 and repulsion, was influenced by katabolism 
 and anabolism, till Sensation (whose true being 
 must be found in the origin of motion), step by 
 step, advanced to Consciousness, and thence to 
 mentality. 
 
 That all effort to rise intellectually above ordi- 
 nary experience, or to what is generally known as 
 the Supernatural, should be limited to Prayer to 
 God, and exertion and culture of our Will. 
 
 There are no proofs of the existence of God save 
 on purely material grounds, and from the con- 
 clusions of Science, which all point to it. Yet 
 this proof can never be absolutely perfected, 
 because as Man advances in it he is ever raising 
 a higher ideal of Divinity unto himself. 
 
 The immortality of the soul depends on the same 
 conditions as the proof of the existence of God. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION • • • - i 
 
 I. ABSOLUTE DIFFERENCE OF SEX - - 7 
 II. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE, OR HOW IT IS THAT 
 
 * things' GROW - - - " 15 
 
 III. THE ORIGIN OF SEX - - - - 26 
 
 IV. THE FEMALE MIND IN MAN : ITS INFLUENCE 
 
 ON THE INNER SELF — OCCULTISM AND 
 SPIRITUALISM - - - - 37 
 
 V. THE MALE INTELLECT IN WOMAN - - 46 
 
 VI. DREAMS, AS INFLUENCED BY THE OPPOSITE 
 SEX IN US, AND AS INDICATING SEPARATE 
 MENTAL ACTION - - - - 60 
 
 VII. MEMORY, AND ITS RELATIONS TO THE INNER 
 
 SELF - - - - - 64 
 
 VIII. HYPNOTISM - - - - - 67 
 
 IX. SENSIVITY AND LOVE - - ' 7^ 
 
 X. OF ENTERING INTO HARMONY AND SYMPATHY 
 
 WITH THE INNER MIND - - - 90 
 
 XI. OF MUTUAL INFLUENCE - - - I07 
 
 XII. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL AND THE 
 
 MIND WITHIN IN RELATION TO THE 
 
 INNER SEX - - - - 114 
 
 XIII. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD - - - 121 
 
 [viil 
 
THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The theory on which this work is based is that 
 the fundamental condition or Intelligence of the 
 two sexes, or Man and Woman, is radically dif- 
 ferent, or corresponding to their physical creation 
 and development. It is generally and popularly 
 held that such difference as we perceive is simply 
 the result of education, association, and habit ; 
 many regarding the entire past as a period during 
 which Women have been oppressed and degraded 
 by Man, forgetting that Man himself has also been 
 subject to the suffering or slavery involved in the 
 earlier stages of Evolution. And as the sexes are 
 generally so much alike in jperson that in certain t 
 cases women have passed in disguise for men, so | 
 there have been thousands of the former who have / 
 developed so much of masculine mentality as to 
 render the idea of equality or actual identity in 
 this respect plausible. Having many intellectual 
 faculties in common with man ; and as, according 
 
 I 
 
2 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 to the old psychology, all formed a 
 'spirit,' and any part indicated a consistent whole; 
 therefore it seemed that the respective manner of 
 Thought was merely the result of hahit. 
 
 As there are, according to the spiritual, mystical, 
 or supernatural theory of the soul, many apparent 
 reasons for believing that the mental nature of 
 the two sexes is identical, there naturally came 
 the belief, as society rose from barbarism to higher 
 culture, that Woman was capable of more in life 
 than had been allowed her. This was quite true, 
 but as it was based on false grounds, and carried 
 too far in a false direction, it led to error. Thus 
 of late in literature, female vindicators of Women's 
 Rights generally assume that theirs is in reality 
 ' the superior sex.' This expression occurs thrice 
 in the last work of the kind which I read, while 
 the lady writer clearly enough holds the opinion 
 that Woman is destined to equal or actually 
 supplant Man in most callings, beginning with 
 all which require superior intellect. 
 
 It is Plato, I believe, who tells us a curious old 
 fable that Man and Woman formed at first a 
 single, epicene being. But having been sepa- 
 rated, the two halves have ever since been seek- 
 ing one another. When they meet there will be 
 two souls or hearts which beat as one. This im- 
 plies that, while the two have much in common, 
 there exist in both radically different elements which 
 require union to develop all their strength. This 
 recalls the other fable of the twigs, which when 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 bound together gain strength as a faggot. Union 
 is force. 
 
 Modern physiology and biology have done much 
 to prove that Sensation, Emotion, Instinct, and 
 Intelligence are all merely degrees of the same Life 
 which manifest themselves so imperceptibly as 
 they develop or ascend, that it is impossible to 
 determine where Conscious vitality does not exist. 
 And wherever it exists, it corresponds accurately 
 to certain physical conditions. No two indi- 
 viduals, even, are quite alike in every nerve and 
 muscle or tissue, and just in proportion do they 
 differ mentally. As all men are unlike in face, 
 and tone of voice, and figure, even to the lines 
 on their hands and feet, so are their characters 
 unlike. They have all, in some respects, different 
 minds. The soul or intellect is not absolutely the 
 same in any two living. There are children who 
 are born drunkards or thieves, while others detest 
 drink, or manifest innate honesty. The numerous 
 instances of ' heredity ' which I have collected 
 (many more being given by Galton) are amusing. 
 Admitting this, which few physiologists deny, 
 the reader will be prepared to believe that if for 
 every physique there is a corresponding mind, 
 that of Woman must differ in certain respects 
 from that of Man. To a certain degree, especi- 
 ally in the savage state, where mere bodily 
 strength gives authority, she is an inferior. Her 
 functions are very different from those of Man. 
 Where skill in hunting and bravery in war or per- 
 
 1—2 
 
4 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 sonal combat form the ideals of society, Man is 
 of course her master. And this is, even at the 
 present day, in our advanced civiUzation, more 
 the case than most people are aware of. Women 
 themselves, as their own novels prove, think far 
 more of ' a gallant officer ' than of all the philan- 
 thropists in existence. It is not many years since 
 there appeared in The Telegraph a long article, in 
 which it was shown that of the eighteen hundred 
 pounds devoted by Government and allotted by 
 the Queen to pensions for literary men alone, or 
 their families, very little went to such legitimate 
 recipients, most of it being given by the Crown to 
 the heirs of soldiers. I find no fault with this ; 
 I merely declare that Society is as yet in a condi- 
 tion during which it is not to be expected that 
 Woman's claim to be the superior sex, or even 
 the universal equal of Man, can be logically 
 admitted. It is as it is. War is as yet a great 
 and inevitable condition of mankind ; while 
 Woman worships superior strength in any form 
 (or uniform), she must remain so far an inferior. 
 As Society becomes more advanced, altruistic or 
 improved, or with every step towards higher ideals. 
 Woman will advance, until, all mutual duties and 
 relations being adjusted, the two sexes will be as 
 counterparts in harmony — or the first and second 
 volumes of a single work, or the two lobes of one 
 brain. 
 
 The general opinion has been thus far, so far as 
 any idea or opinion at all has been evolved on the 
 
INTRODUCTION J 
 
 subject, that Woman is growing to be like Man, 
 until eventually the only real difference between 
 the two will be that of Sex, and perhaps of phy- 
 sique. I say ' perhaps,^ because I find that nearly 
 all the ' women's rights women ' cite wistfully, if 
 not hopefully, instances in which daring sisters 
 have, undetected, served as soldiers or sailors. 
 There are, in fact, in divers places in the Western 
 United States, female policemen, but as there were 
 in Rome during the reign of Nero female gladia- 
 tors who fought in public, we may regard all such 
 as exceptions which prove a rule. And to slightly 
 digress, it may here be remarked that there can 
 be no question whatever that with proper train- 
 ing and advanced physical culture Women may, 
 perhaps one and all, become equal in this respect 
 to what Man now is. The daily physical exercise 
 of a Roman Empress was very nearly equal to 
 that of a modern prize-fighter, the result of which 
 was sons whose bull-necks were nearly as large in 
 circumference as their heads, or men who could 
 bend horseshoes with their hands. But it should 
 not be forgotten that men also improved in pro- 
 portion, and kept ahead in the race. These proofs 
 that Woman may become strong enough to per- 
 form much which Man now executes, and will 
 therefore become his equal in all things, recall the 
 story of a youth who set forth in theory how he 
 intended to overcome, vi et armis, a certain enemy. 
 ' But,' remarked his hearer, ' what do you think 
 the other man will be doing all the time ?' 
 
6 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 Now be it observed, that to assume the abso- 
 lute equahty, Hkeness or identity of the female 
 mind or ' intelligence ' with that of the male, is 
 not only contrary to all experience, but it also 
 renders impossible the clear intelligence and de- 
 velopment of what are really Woman's peculiar 
 faculties or capacities. And these, as I hope to 
 show, are far greater than any writer as yet known 
 to me has ever dreamed of, although so mysteri- 
 ous and involving such an entirely new field of 
 investigation that all I can hope for is to act as 
 pioneer, or like Carlyle's backwoodsman, whose 
 mission it is at most to fell the forest, leaving it 
 for more skilful hands to fully cultivate the soil. 
 
 It is therefore in absolutely denying to Woman 
 equality with Man as the World or Society now 
 exists, and by casting aside all present arguments 
 founded on old metaphysical theories, that I find 
 the reason for believing that the true concord and 
 balance of interests will be found. The first step 
 towards such conclusion lies in certain mental 
 differences which we will now briefly consider. 
 And it is in these differences, and even in much 
 which our present ignorance regards as indicating 
 Inferiority, that the glory of the Future consists, 
 so that of Woman it may be truly said : 
 
 * What I was is passed by, 
 What I am away doth fly ; 
 What I shall be none do see, 
 Yet in That my beauties be.* 
 
CHAPTER i 
 
 ABSOLUTE DIFFERENCE OF SEX 
 
 * Now have I heard of a Man, 'twas in Damascus, there 
 bee manye such in Persia and Turkey, who by looking at 
 the wrong side of a Tapestry could discerne all the Beauty 
 of the other, and, what was more, that in whiche it could be 
 amended.' 
 
 There was probably no time during the world's 
 history when Woman enjoyed such power or had 
 such influence in Society, literature, and politics, 
 as in France from the days of Louis XIV. down to 
 those of the end of the First Empire. The men of 
 greatest minds seemed to have lived in and for 
 Women, not merely sensually ; though in this 
 respect (as such works as the Chevalier de Faublas' 
 prove), the whole world of Paris appears to have 
 gone mad ; but also intellectually. Never, at any 
 time, in any land was the sex so much considered, 
 so deeply studied, and, according to the dim lights 
 of the age, so minutely analyzed. And Woman 
 did all in her power to aid man by epistolary cor- 
 respondence, conversation, and political intrigue, 
 in all of which she developed genius fully equal to 
 his own. 
 
 [7l 
 
8 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 It may be here noted as germane to the subject, 
 that this was during the Rococo or Baroque age 
 in art, when the vaguely-pretty and irregular, and 
 decoration like that which characterizes modern 
 feminine dress or costume, was predominant, in 
 marked contrast to the determinate or masculine 
 Gothic, and other styles which had preceded it. 
 
 There was a vast amount of writing about 
 Women and their characteristics, drawn from 
 great experience and very subtle observation, 
 which may be summarized as follows : 
 
 That Women are, in fact, radically different 
 from Men, however much they have in common. 
 They are like the individuals who inhabit every 
 one his own house, while using common pastures 
 for their cattle, or even crops. 
 
 That the female sex in humanity is pre-emi- 
 nently fickle, changeable, and ' unreliable,' or as 
 Francis I. wrote it, following the older Latin 
 saying of Varium et mutabile semper femina, or 
 La donna e mobile : 
 
 * Toujours femme varie, 
 Bien fol est qui s'y fie.' 
 
 That in many things — not all — Woman displays 
 superior quickness of perception. This is strik- 
 ingly shown in the fact that she can at a glance 
 take in and accurately describe all the details of 
 another woman's dress. 
 
 That in certain matters she displays superior 
 tact. This has gradually been exaggerated into 
 
ABSOLUTE DIFFERENCE OF SEX 9 
 
 a belief, or expression, that this Tact is shown in 
 all th^'ngs. 
 
 That being more unthinking than man, or less 
 given to reflection, and also by temperament more 
 sensitive, she is proportionally more irritated by 
 injuries or personal slights. 
 
 That she is more vindictive or revengeful than 
 man. 
 
 That she never feels Remorse in its true sense. 
 She may bitterly regret having done wrong when 
 punishment overtakes her, but seldom or never 
 repents the original impulse. 
 
 That she is more deeply interested in personal 
 matters, but cares less for subjects of general 
 interest than Man. 
 
 That she is more a creature of Impulse — that is, 
 acting more promptly on first impressions in all 
 things, good or bad. 
 
 That she has more general personal curiosity 
 and inquisitiveness than Man, and is therefore 
 more given to gossip. Hence a greater degree 
 of loquacity. 
 
 That she has a far deeper and stronger love for 
 her offspring than Man, and this is generally more 
 developed in her as regards all family relations. 
 For in proportion as she is a bitter enemy so is 
 she a true friend. 
 
 That Women are curiously and extremely in- 
 different to and unobservant of even interesting 
 subjects which appeal to every man. Thus it has 
 been accurately observed that there was from 
 
lo THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 morning to night always a crowd of men and boys 
 before a certain shop-window in which there was 
 a working model of some invention. But no 
 woman or girl ever stopped an instant to look at 
 it. Once, as Editor of a journal, I was much 
 annoyed by people knocking at my door. There- 
 fore I put on it in very large letters. Come in with- 
 out knocking. Always after that, whenever I 
 heard a knock, I said, ' That is a darkey or a 
 lady.' The poor coloured folk did not know how 
 to read, and the women would not. But I never 
 knew one who had not a very prompt excuse or 
 reply or ' reason ' when I asked her why she had 
 not obeyed the request ! 
 
 That she has, on the whole, or perhaps in a 
 majority of cases, a better memory than Man for 
 personal matters, and as to people or places. As 
 regards any thing which does not in some way 
 interest her, or ' come home,' she often has no 
 memory at all unless it be from deliberate will. It 
 is well known that as a man and his wife grow 
 older, the latter is the most frequently referred 
 to for memories of the Past. All people can 
 verify this from any old couple. 
 
 Women have to a remarkable degree the art 
 of appearing to be interested in conversation, in 
 subjects which do not interest them in the least. 
 This is greatly valued as an art by a certain class 
 of men, but though praised by Emerson, almost 
 as a virtue, it is of small credit to a truly honest 
 and sincere nature, for it is ' humbug.' 
 
ABSOLUTE DIFFERENCE OF SEX ii 
 
 That she never spontaneously develops the In- 
 ventive faculty, though she sometimes produces 
 good results when she attempts such work. The 
 proprietor of two large manufactories in America 
 told me that while every man and boy in his em- 
 ployment had once at least suggested an improve- 
 ment in machinery or an invention, he had never 
 known a female employee to do anything of the 
 kind. 
 
 Though more given to merriment and fun than 
 man, there has never yet appeared in literature a 
 single original female Humourist. 
 
 A witty, flippant, or stinging repartee, especi- 
 ally if it be unanswerable, passes with all women, 
 and also many men, as fully equivalent to the 
 most logical and reasonable argument. Hence 
 the proneness of the female sex to personal reflec- 
 tion, side issues, and the like. In all cases they 
 prefer gaining the Victory to establishing a Truth. 
 And many men are like unto them. 
 
 These illustrations could be greatly extended. 
 But there is one opinion in which all writers agree 
 — that there is something extremely inscrutable]/ 
 and puzzling in the general nature of Woman, orl 
 a Mystery which no one has ever as yet solved — 
 a mystery on which she herself, however intelli- 
 gent, can cast no light. In this, the greatly- 
 abused saying, that ' Women are all alike,' is 
 true enough. 
 
 Now, as to depict an object truly we must give 
 the shadows as well as the lights, so do I, (assum- 
 
12 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 ing theoretically that the foregoing characteristics 
 are all facts,) declare that these facts go very far 
 to establish and explain the theory of the female 
 mind which I shall eventually set forth. That 
 they are chiefly shadows is of no account what- 
 ever, the only object being to establish that there 
 are generally recognised or credited mental differ- 
 ences between the sexes. For they are very far 
 indeed from showing Woman as she is, in full, or 
 as she is destined to be. 
 
 The next step will be to investigate the physical 
 origin of the sexes, so as to cast further light on the 
 subject of differences and of development. This 
 is absolutely necessary, since it is in the very 
 ' origin of origins ' or the sources of the fountain 
 of life that we must seek for the causes of varia- 
 tion in sex, which lead eventually to marvellous 
 results and conclusions. Of the immensely bene- 
 ficial influence which the imier feraale mind exerts 
 on the male, and how it co-operates in every effort 
 of Genius, I will speak ' later on.' 
 
 * These be the shadows which set forth the Light.' 
 
 As regards the question of the relative Superi- 
 ority of the sexes, common-sense should have 
 taught the disputants long ago, that in the be- 
 ginning of society, where life was a violent physical 
 struggle under brutal conditions, the Male must 
 be, as the creator and active agent, very much 
 the superior. In the earlier developments of life, 
 whether in plants or insects, all are females so 
 
ABSOLUTE DIFFERENCE OF SEX 13 
 
 long as there is anlimited food to be had for taking^ 
 and warmth. But as soon as the supply begins 
 to diminish, and hard work is required to 
 obtain it, with endurance, the Male is developed. 
 Among savages, or wherever the real gifts of 
 Women which will at a future time render her 
 man's equal are of no use, she must still be abso- 
 lutely inferior. Thus in ' The Evolution of Sex,' 
 the authors declare that ' Few maintain that the 
 sexes are essentially equal, still fewer that the 
 females excel ; the general bias of authority has 
 been in favour of the males. From the earliest 
 ages philosophers have contended that Woman 
 is but an undeveloped man. Darwin's theory of 
 sexual selection presupposes a superiority, and an 
 entail in the male line ; for Spencer, the develop- 
 ment of woman is early arrested by procreative 
 functions. In short, Darwin's man is, as it were, 
 an evolved woman, and Spencer's an arrested 
 man.' ' Tiedemann and others regard female off- 
 spring as arrested in the original state.' 
 
 All of this means that woman is inferior or sub- 
 ordinate to Man, while all are savages, but has no 
 hint of the great truth that there are in her mental 
 possibilities which will in due time appear in 
 higher stages of culture, as they have indeed 
 always manifested themselves when society has 
 improved. But while destined to be fully his 
 equal, Woman can never in general be Man's 
 Superior, unless the fundamental laws of our 
 being are changed, because, as I shall endeavour 
 
14 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 to show in the production of any work of genius, 
 or even of any elevated train of Thought, the male 
 mental energy and vigorous power of organiza- 
 tion is required, though it in turn would be useless, 
 were it not for female co-operation. 
 
 Women who complain of being as they are, 
 resemble the Ugly Duckling in the Fable who 
 would have liked very much at one time to have 
 been a Goose, but for whom a far more brilliant 
 future was reserved. Many women say, ' That is 
 all very fine, but we want to be equal now,^ But 
 for the very great majority as they now are, and 
 must and will be for a long time to come, this is 
 as if a small boy ward should demand of his 
 guardian perfect freedom and control of his pro- 
 perty. It is quite true that at some future time 
 the child may become far more intelligent and 
 fitter to deal with an estate than his ' tutor.' 
 Which is all the more a reason why his, as yet 
 undeveloped, genius should be trained and dis- 
 ciplined while a youth. ' Understand ye this — 
 or what ?' 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE, OR HOW IT IS THAT 
 ' THINGS ' GROW 
 
 *Aux generations spontandes est-ce une idde qui preside 
 au phenom^ne? Non, le phenom^ne est la rdsultante des 
 causes qui le ddterminent. Un germe apparait, se d^veloppe, 
 dclat non sur un plan conQU d'avance, mais sous Taction de 
 causes qui toujours le tiennent sous leur influence. Un plan 
 precon9U, immuable, serait ici funeste.' — Eugene Noel : 
 Memoires d^un Imbecile, 
 
 A STUDY of the characteristics or faculties of the 
 two sexes not only involves some knowledge of 
 Embryology or Ontogenia, which seeks to set 
 forth how the animal or human being originates, 
 but also that of Biology or life itself. 
 
 In early times living beings were supposed to be 
 the result of spontaneous generation, or of mys- 
 terious metamorphosis, caused, no one knew how, 
 by the action of certain primaeval types and 
 planetary influences. Thus the mud of the Nile 
 was supposed to generate strange reptiles, mice 
 were born of decay and dirt, eels were originally 
 horse-hairs ; in fact, the generatio ex putredine, or 
 birth from Corruption, was an established faith 
 [15] 
 
i6 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 which still survives in all countries among the 
 ignorant. Closer observation in more modern 
 times induced the conclusion that all forms of life 
 sprung from germs, or eggs, in varied forms, which 
 often underwent several changes, until Linnaeus 
 finally declared that ' nullce species novcB, species 
 tot sunt diverscBy quot diversas formas ah initio 
 creavit infinitum ens ' — ' There are no new species, 
 there are as many different kinds as the infinite 
 being created in the beginning.' This was the 
 doctrine of the fixity of species, subsequently 
 endorsed by Cuvier. 
 
 About the end of the eighteenth century, philo- 
 sophers and naturalists such as De Maillet, Buffon, 
 Diderot, Goethe, and many German followers of 
 the new Natur-philosophie began to admit that 
 there was, however, such a thing as Variability 
 of Species, which, as Professor Giacomo Cattaneo 
 observes,* had been vaguely observed or sur- 
 mised in ancient times by Anaximander, Hera- 
 clites, Empedocles, Aristotle, and Lucretius, and 
 in later times by Vanini. This latter, indeed, in 
 his work De admirandis Naturce Arcanis, a.d. 
 1613, sets forth the system so clearly that he may 
 almost be regarded as its originator. But it was 
 Lamarck (1801-1809) who deserves the credit of 
 having scientifically founded the doctrine of Vari- 
 ability, and Darwin, (1859), who fully analyzed 
 the question, and led it to stupendous deduction. 
 
 * *Embryologia e Morfologia Generale.' Hoepfli, Milan, 
 1895. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 17 
 
 It was, however, the opinion of Richerand (New 
 Elements of Physiology, 1813) that ' the moderns ' 
 have rejected too arbitrarily the old idea of spon- 
 taneous generation. ' Bees may not be generated 
 from an ox,' as Virgil teaches, ' but the monads 
 among the infusoria, the byssus in the earlier 
 algce, seem to be the direct product of heat, mois- 
 ture, and electricity.' This opinion, modestly 
 advanced, has received apparent confirmation 
 from very recent researches ; that is to say, that 
 life, or organic forms, have an origin in common 
 with Crystals, as is set forth in La Vita rei Cris- 
 talli (La Nuova Parola, Roma, 1902), treating of 
 the discoveries of Professor Otto SchrOn, of the 
 University of Naples. If these discoveries be 
 true, we may conclude that, ' as the barriers 
 which separated the animal kingdom from that 
 of the vegetable were swept away, so have we 
 now destroyed those which separated the organic 
 from the inorganic world.' ' The force which 
 rules matter, and exists separately from it, is 
 perhaps a kind of ether ; its existence is not 
 proved. This means a kind of ether which is 
 constitutionally different irom, and more subtle 
 than, the ether which causes luminous and electric 
 vibrations.' 
 
 Until very recently, or even yet, there were, or 
 are, many scientific men who regard the problem 
 of the origin of life as insoluble, because the ex- 
 tremes of heat and cold through which the world 
 has passed would have killed any organism. They 
 
 2 
 
i8 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 did not, or do not, take into consideration the fact 
 that the same elements and the same forces which 
 created all things existed through all, ever ready 
 to act in new production according to circum- 
 stance. In fact, the latest and ablest work on 
 Embryology which has appeared in Italy, that of 
 Cattaneo, 1895, contains the following passage : 
 
 * However, the question of spontaneous gene- 
 ration, if not as yet solved in the field of experi- 
 ment, constitutes a problem which is anything 
 but absurd in that of philosophy. One of the 
 two ' (must be true) — ' either life has always 
 existed on our globe, or began to exist. The first 
 hypothesis cannot be sustained, because the 
 ancient conditions of the earth, owing to excess 
 of elevated temperatures ' (extremes of heat 
 or cold), 'could not have been adapted to the 
 production and preservation of organic combina- 
 tions.' 
 
 In fact, there is not a grain of this world's sub- 
 stance which has not passed through the utmost 
 extremes of heat and cold, and probably through 
 innumerable forms ; but during it all the Laws, 
 whose aggregate is God, the tremendous Infinite, 
 were in and through it all ' working and weaving 
 in endless motion.' 
 
 Professor Cattaneo and his kind forget that, 
 though organisms or life might be frozen or baked 
 out of the whole world, the Laws or Forces or 
 Matter out of which all things can be created were 
 always there — only waiting their opportunity. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 19 
 
 For no degree of heat or cold can deprive the 
 primitive atoms of their nature, nor extinguish 
 Laws ; which, if borne in mind, will cast light on 
 many things which I shall discuss ere this book 
 comes to Finis. 
 
 And it is also to be observed that the great 
 primary laws of stupendous power which defy 
 the extremes of heat and cold (which are only 
 secondary results) have the power of producing 
 other laws, such as that of Sensivity, which has 
 an active influence in Life and its development 
 into Mind. There is much as yet undetermined in 
 all this, but the theory agrees with all known truth. 
 
 It was long held, even from the beginning, that 
 the first woman, or Eve, contained within herself, 
 though undeveloped, infinite millions of germs of 
 men, or, in fact, the whole human race to be in 
 future, and this potentiality of descendants with- 
 out number was attributed not only to all women, 
 but to every organism, however small, as, for 
 instance, every seed. As new discoveries ren- 
 dered this opinion of no value, it became apparent 
 that there might be, however, a transmission of 
 certain vital or other energies, which are, so to 
 speak, self-renewing under the action and influ- 
 ence of certain laws. This I more fully express 
 in the following Theory : 
 
 When certain molecules or aggregates of atoms 
 meet under certain conditions of heat or cold, 
 light or darkness, ethereal vibratory influence, 
 electricity, or other causes or forces, they form 
 
 2—2 
 
20 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 an Unity which henceforth remains, per se, always 
 attracting or repelling certain other combinations 
 of matter or certain forces, as is illustrated in all 
 chemical action. Thus it forms within itself its 
 own laws of development, of accretion, vor rejec- 
 tion, with those of generation or continuance, 
 deriving from different media the peculiar sub- 
 stances needed for its existence and action. Thus, 
 under favourable conditions, the chance union of 
 certain assemblages of molecules or groups of 
 atoms may originate any animal, plant or cr^^stal, 
 wherever laws or forces and elements — that is to 
 say, matter — exist. 
 
 Thus, instead of embryo animals in infinite 
 number, there exists in the mother a force, or 
 ^-ggregate of forces, which attracts or repels other 
 forces which create germs of life. This force is 
 itself sustained and transmitted by harmonious 
 action with other energies. 
 
 Under certain conditions, certain organisms 
 grow in size or diminish, change colour or quality, 
 according to the supply of what may be called 
 their food, while they still remain true to their 
 original type. This constitutes variability of 
 species. 
 
 The primary laws of attraction and repulsion, 
 as shown in electricity and chemical affinities, 
 are all-powerful and all-pervading. ' Life ' in all 
 its phases is one form of their action. It is not a 
 condition or existence by itself, but the result of a 
 combination of matter and forces.' 
 
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 21 
 
 The long-prevalent belief that the Creation of 
 all things began on a Monday morning, May i, 
 six thousand and odd years ago* has long im- 
 peded the progress of true science among the 
 ultra-conservative in faith. Whereas Matter and 
 the Forces which control it have existed and been 
 in action for a foregone Eternity, during which 
 time they have had opportunity enough to bind 
 and loose, create and re-create, themselves to any 
 extent. 
 
 If the Law of Accretion, or of growth by attrac- 
 tion, and rejection, according to laws like those of 
 Electricity, be accepted, we may also accept as a 
 conclusion that miUions of experiments being 
 made, there is no organization in Nature so in- 
 genious or complex but what it might be formed 
 and grow. The same laws which developed the 
 simplest crystals when repeated on themselves 
 in new combination, suffice to create all the 
 amazingly complex, minute, and hidden pheno- 
 mena of germination, or of every change in 
 matter. 
 
 There is no evidence of teleology or of mental 
 intention towards an end evident in Creation, and 
 no proof of the contrary. For while the evolu- 
 tionist establishes that there is, on the contrary, 
 often an end or falling backward, it always comes 
 out in the end that the relapse was a part of a 
 great advance. 
 
 * I forget Bishop Burnet's exact date, though I have within 
 a few days seen his valuable work for sale for one penny. 
 
22 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 Progress and Self-correction are the necessary 
 results of all Action. 
 
 As from the ten numerals infinite combinations 
 and mathematical problems may be evolved, all 
 following a simple Law, or as from the alphabet 
 we may express a literature, Thought being given 
 to inspire it, so from matter inspired by Force, 
 which develops itself into other forces, a world 
 results. And if we knew all, we should probably 
 be more amazed at its simplicity than its com- 
 plexity. 
 
 If it be asked, why, if this Theory be true, new 
 creations of organisms are not continually ap- 
 pearing ? it may be replied : ' Because new crea- 
 tions are by no means so promptly and swiftly 
 produced as many may imagine.' Nature has 
 made the Cell the nucleus or beginning of organ- 
 isms, although, as Cattaneo declares,* ' the cell is 
 really not the primitive organism, for we must 
 admit that there was before it a long series of less 
 complex bodies. This development required so 
 much time that it may have taken thousands of 
 years to change a hydrate of carbon to proto- 
 plasm.' And yet, again, the cell, once regarded 
 as the simplest of bodies, is now found to consist 
 of different parts, such as the nucleus membrane 
 and protoplasma nucleole, and to assume a great 
 variety of forms. The development of the cell — 
 that is to say, of any organism — must have also 
 * ' Protoplasma e cellula ' in * Embryologia Generale.' 
 
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 23 
 
 required additional ages or thousands of years — 
 i.e., added to those of the earher chemical crea- 
 tion. 
 
 Add to this that certain conditions of the atmo- 
 sphere and moisture, which were favourable to 
 development of ' organisms,' such as excess of 
 carbon, now exist no longer. 
 
 Now to recapitulate, it is to be firstly observed 
 that there is no definite point or stage between 
 inorganic and organic existence at which that 
 which we call life begins. The most solid stone 
 or metal consists of molecules in motion, and 
 wherever action or activity is found there is 
 Vitahty. All VitaHty, Sensivity, or Action falls 
 into the Law of the positive and negative, of the 
 active and passive ; hence, in time, that of the 
 male and female, or anabolism and katabolism. 
 And every stage as it is reached creates another, 
 yet no one can say Where one leaves off and the 
 other begins. 
 
 Now, in the last generation Matter was regarded 
 as the absolutely Lifeless until ' informed ' with 
 ' spirit '; ' but we have changed all that.' As 
 the French fabricator of liquids said to his heir : 
 ' My son, wine can be made from anything, even 
 grapes,' so we may declare that Life can be made 
 even from matter and Force, and properly from 
 nothing else. 
 
 Now, as certain matter or molecular grouping 
 attracts certain forces, the result being charac- 
 teristic creations, even so through all organic 
 
24 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 nature there is a marked difference shown be- 
 tween the male and female factors. For be it in 
 plants, insects, fishes, or vertebrates, they are of 
 absolute unlikeness in their special kinds of duties 
 and intelligence. As it has been declared (' Evo- 
 lution of Sex ') ' that Men should have greater 
 cerebral variability, and therefore more origi- 
 nality, while Women have greater stability, and 
 therefore more " common-sense," are facts both 
 consistent with the general theory of sex and 
 verifiable in common experience.' 
 
 In the Origin of Life, Man and Woman are 
 entirely different, and it is only in a state of quite 
 conventional and superficial society that Woman 
 can assume likeness to him. And it will be found 
 that, in accordance with the Law of Evolution, 
 she must recognise and adhere to her true and 
 most deeply innate Feminine character to become 
 Man's true equal at last. 
 
 Therefore, I repeat, as a necessary sequence to 
 the Laws of Life and of Sex, that Nature has to 
 every organism allotted its peculiar gift of intel- 
 ligence : 
 
 * Suum cuique propria dat Natura munus.' 
 
 This gift is exactly varied to every individual 
 according to his or her physical or bodily condi- 
 tions, no matter on how small a scale they may 
 be. Therefore, just in exact proportion to the 
 Feminine remains in Man's structure is there left 
 in him a female Mentalitv, while the converse is 
 
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 25 
 
 true for Woman. And this is at the bottom of 
 more in our habits of thought than any metaphy- 
 sician ever dreamed, and it is destined, when it 
 shall be fully understood, to work wonders in the 
 Future. 
 
 The idea of growth as expressed in this chapter 
 is curiously set forth in brief in a passage of a 
 little-known work, La Selva di Varia Lettione, by 
 M. Manibrino Rosas da Fabrians, Venice, 1611 : 
 ' It was the opinion of Heraclitus, an ancient 
 philosopher, and of many more after him, that all 
 bodies were made by the concord and discord of 
 elements, and that from their peace or enmity 
 came the generation and decay of all things,' 
 which only requires to be enlarged and explained 
 according to the light of modern science to be 
 generally accepted. And let any philosopher of 
 our time make the clearest and fullest explana- 
 tion which he can of anything, from God down- 
 wards, what he says will seem as incomplete and 
 babbling to the thinker of a thousand years 
 hence. 
 
 It will occur to all who are prompt to form 
 fairy-tales in science that the theory of growth 
 by accretion and limitation according to the 
 mutual action of forces or matter, suggests that 
 by synthetical experiment the chemist can hardly 
 fail to create new existences, organic or otherwise. 
 This is a curious speculation, but it must be ad- 
 mitted that it is not more unhkely than many 
 things which Science has of late actually achieved. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF SEX 
 
 Some slight knowledge of the physiological origin 
 of sex is absolutely necessary in order to render 
 intelligible or establish what I propose to advance 
 in these pages. 
 
 It is probable that no physical problem ever 
 attracted, from the very beginning of Medicine or 
 research into nature, so much attention as the 
 origin of Hfe and its manifestation in sex. For 
 every physician was interested in its solution, 
 and every anatomist attempted research, if not 
 always on the human body, at least on that of 
 animals, in which latter chickens and their eggs, 
 and then frogs, had conspicuous place. And it 
 is very remarkable that so much labour for a very 
 long time brought forth so little result, or so many 
 absurd theories, beginning with that of Pytha- 
 goras, who had doubtless many predecessors in 
 the East. F. Capuron, the author of a clever, and 
 for its time complete, work on Obstetrics,* re- 
 
 * Much improved in the Italian version — Corso teorico 
 practico delta Ostetrica di F. Capuron^ 1838. It is curious 
 
 L26] 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SEX 27 
 
 marks that Hippocrates, Empedocles, Galen, and 
 Lucretius all believed that the origin of the human 
 foetus was simply the coagulation of two semina 
 or generative fluids, contributed jointly by either 
 sex, an idea still held by millions. Aristotle 
 modified this theory by assuming that the femi- 
 nine addition was like a material which, being 
 inspired with life by that of the male, took form, 
 as does clay or marble when modelled by the 
 sculptor. Here, indeed, we have the beginning 
 of an idea of katabolic or male energy as acting 
 in the anabolic or passive force. Maupertuis 
 among the moderns formed the ingenious but 
 eccentric theory that in the mingling of male 
 and female semen molecules were formed which, 
 obeying the laws of attraction and repulsion, 
 became human things. It is, however, nothing 
 against this theory to declare, as Capuron, or 
 Coen, does, that it would reduce the process to 
 simple crystallization, since the latter is not radi- 
 cally different from organic commencement. This 
 was effectively the theory of Buffon, who believed 
 that different groups of molecules formed the 
 different members of the body. 
 
 ' These ancient doctrines prevailed until the 
 middle of the seventeenth century, when Stenone 
 declared that the ovary was a deposit of actual 
 
 to trace in this writer, as in others of his time, the beginning 
 of scientific caution and suspicion of new facts, in which they 
 were sometimes overscrupulous. 
 
28 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 ova, or eggs. He held that one of these, after 
 being fecundated by the male sperm, broke 
 through its envelopment and passed into the 
 womb,' there to be perfected. This was a great 
 advance, but it involved great error. For it was 
 observed that if the male contribution only 
 vitalized the ovum, or egg, it would follow that 
 all results would be feminine, and that there 
 could be no half-breeds such as mules or mulattos. 
 And neither Malpighi, Vallisnieri, or even Haller, 
 who made innumerable experiments or researches, 
 could detect a formation, either in the womb or in 
 the passage thereto, before the eighteenth day 
 after sexual union. All of this was complicated 
 with innumerable theories as to the nature of the 
 egg, as that it in itself contained other eggs ad 
 infinitum, and also that it required a second 
 fecundation. 
 
 These views prevailed for more than a century, 
 until Leuwenhoek made, through one of his 
 scholars, Hamm, a great discovery. For the 
 student, having observed that in the male semen 
 there were what appeared to be animalculae in 
 great numbers swimming about, communicated 
 the fact to the master, who proceeded by thou- 
 sands of microscopic observations to prove it. 
 Capuron ridicules the theory, 'because, as there 
 are thousands of male germs wasted where one 
 succeeds in effecting an union. Nature cannot 
 allow such waste,' forgetting that of the eggs of 
 a herring not more than i in 30,000 ever becomes 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SEX 29 
 
 a fish, while the loss of seeds in plants is incalcu- 
 lable. And he finishes this remark by declaring 
 — this was in 1838 — that ' We conclude, there- 
 fore, that we are as yet in ignorance as to how 
 generation is effected, and that the learned, with 
 all their experiments and systems, have not as yet 
 solved its mystery nor lifted the veil.' 
 
 It is just worth the while to mention that Hip- 
 pocrates and Aristotle, with many others, formed 
 theories as to the generation of males or females 
 from the right or left of the male testes, or from 
 the same relative position in the ovary of the egg, 
 and from the influence of the north or south wind. 
 Claudio Quillet, in his Callipedia, taught in poetry 
 how to have beautiful children, and Robert how 
 to bestow on them genius. In fact, within two 
 or three years, as I write, a professor in Vienna 
 has attempted to prove that some of this can be 
 done. 
 
 ' The number of speculations,' say the authors 
 of the ' Evolution of Sex ' (1898), ' as to the 
 nature of sex has been wellnigh doubled since 
 Drelincourt in the last century brought together 
 two hundred and sixty-two " groundless hypo- 
 theses," and since Blumenbach quaintly remarked 
 that Drelincourt's own theory formed the two 
 hundred and sixty-third.' To which his own has 
 since been added. Perhaps the end will never be 
 quite attained, but it is tolerably certain that, so 
 far as Science has progressed of late years, its 
 conclusions, being records of simple observation, 
 
30 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 are truths, ' inasmuch as the present theory is 
 for the first time an expression of ' the facts in 
 terms which are agreed to be fundamental in 
 biology — those of the anabolism and katabolism 
 of protoplasm.' 
 
 Wolf in 1759 had anticipated the theory of the 
 ovum by tracing the foetus back to ' a layer of 
 organized particles,' or the cells of to-day. In 
 1824 Prevost and Dumas noticed the division of 
 the ovum into masses, and soon after Purkinje 
 discovered its nucleus or germinal vesicle. Thus, 
 step by step, its actual form was more and more 
 determined, while, soon after. Von Siebold and 
 Wagner elucidated the real nature of the sperma- 
 tozoa or male germs. 
 
 In 1838 Schleiden had reduced all vegetable 
 tissues to the cellular type — that is, found the 
 beginning of every plant in a single nucleated cell. 
 This was the origin of the cell theory, and the 
 female ovum was soon recognised as a cell. ' Kol- 
 liker led the way, now so well followed up, in 
 tracing these cells to their results in the tissues of 
 the protoplasm ' (' Evolution of Sex '). The sper- 
 matozoon of the male and the ovum of the female 
 are both cells ; sexual reproduction is the union 
 of these. Agassiz has termed this ovum ' the 
 greatest discovery in natural science in modern 
 times.' 
 
 The ovary is a receptacle in two divisions, con- 
 taining ovUy or minute eggs. It corresponds to 
 the testes in man, suggesting that if the influence, 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SEX 31 
 
 whatever it may be, which determines sex had 
 created a male, the ovarium would have been a 
 scrotum. The single egg consists of protoplasm, 
 a primary substance which is, however, a mass of 
 varied substances — i.e., yolk-balls, granules, pig- 
 ment, and the archoplasm of Boveri, which appears 
 to have a marvellous influence in forming the 
 whole. 
 
 In this is the nucleus or germinal vesicle, which 
 is in reality an intricate microcosm. Within this 
 is the nucleolus of R. Wagner or Schron, a ger- 
 minal spot within the vesicle, and ' even this 
 latter has a very complex structure, and in a 
 sense a curious internal life all its own.' It is 
 the opinion of Professor O. Hertwig (Theorie der 
 Befruchtung) that the cell-nuclei determine the 
 sex. He declares that, ' In fertilization, distinctly 
 demonstrable morphological processes occur. Of 
 these, the important and essential one is the union 
 of two sexually differentiated cell-nuclei — i.e., the 
 female nucleus of the ovum and the male nucleus 
 of the sperm. These contain the fertilizing 
 nuclear substance, which is an organized sub- 
 stance, and acts as such in the process. The 
 female nuclear substance transmits the charac- 
 teristics of the mother, the male nucleus those of 
 the father to the offspring.' 
 
 With all this, other authors — Joseph, Nuss- 
 baum, Strassburger, and Boveri — declare that 
 the protoplasm or sperm exerts as much influ- 
 ence in formation as the nuclei. It is probable 
 
32 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 that both are essential. There i^ great differ- 
 ence of opinion among scientists as to the process 
 of fertihzation. According to Weismann, ' The 
 physiological values of sperm and egg-cell are 
 equal. We can hardly ascribe to the body of the 
 ovum a higher import than that of being the 
 common nutritive basis for the two conjugating 
 nuclei.* ' The germ plasma in the male and 
 female reproductive cells is identical.' 
 
 The ovum is one of the largest of cells, and the 
 sperm of the male one of the smallest. The latter 
 has its cellular origin in the testes. It usually 
 consists of a minute head or nucleus, and a long 
 contractile tail, which propels it like a screw. It 
 is generally like a tadpole. It is highly active. 
 Its origin and constituent parts are as complex 
 and varied as those of the ovum. 
 
 Whether the sex of the foetus, or being begotten, 
 is derived from an hermaphrodite existence in the 
 ovum, which is only fertilized by the spermatozoon, 
 or whether it is a combination of the two germs, 
 is even yet a subject of dispute, owing to the vast 
 number of creatures which are epicene or double 
 sexed, and born, as it were, only from the mother. 
 The truth is apparently that, as the male influ- 
 ence existed in a latent form in the female, and 
 vice versa, both theories may be, in fact, 
 right. 
 
 The child of a black father and a white mother 
 is a mulatto. Most children exhibit, more or less, 
 not only the characteristics of both parents, but 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SEX 33 
 
 even those of grandparents, sometimes reproduc- 
 ing by atavism those of remote ancestors. I my- 
 self in infancy and boyhood was strongly marked 
 by likeness to my mother and her family ; as I 
 grew older I became as much like my father. And 
 it is a fact to notice regarding atavism, for more 
 than four hundred years, fifty years have never 
 passed but that one of my name has published a 
 book on Antiquities or subjects closely allied to 
 them. Therefore, it is evident that, in Man, at 
 least, half the intellect comes more or less from 
 the father. 
 
 Bearing this fact in mind, we come to what is, 
 for the purpose of my work, the most important 
 of all — that there are in every man certain female 
 characteristics of a marked character. One of 
 these is the breasts and nipples. There are un- 
 questionable records of men who have actually 
 yielded milk. One such came under my own 
 observation. There is another of an American 
 Indian father, who, after the mother died, suckled 
 his child. The prostate in Man is simply a womb 
 ' out of employment.' When I once asked a dis- 
 tinguished Italian physician. Dr. Paggi, what was 
 its real use, he replied : ' To annoy men sadly as 
 they grow old.' There are also other peculiarities 
 in Man which are manifestly relics of the female 
 which have, so to speak, no bodily use, but which, 
 as I hope to show, have a higher endowment in 
 maintaining in us a female mentality. 
 
 According to Professor Giacomo Cattaneo, in 
 
 3 
 
 K 
 
34 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 his very complete ' Handbook of Embryology and 
 Morphology ' (1895), hermaphroditism may be an 
 original condition. 'Then, if the sexual organs 
 of either sex weaken away, they can only perform 
 their functions as male or female, therefore the 
 reduction of one sex will produce the more de- 
 veloped organs of another. So we pass from one 
 sex to another, and we have proof of this in the 
 fact that males generally preserve some rudiments 
 of female organs, and females of the male. The 
 prostate of man is a rudiment of an uterus, the 
 clitoris of a woman that of the masculine organ.' 
 
 In Woman, all the generative, sexual, or genital 
 organs are simply those of man subdued or varied. 
 This has been observed for centuries. It often 
 happens that these are abnormally developed, so 
 that the subject passes for a male, or even parti- 
 ally performs the functions of one {exempli gratia, 
 ubi clitoris permagne est). There are, on the con- 
 trary, males in whom retrocession, or indrawing 
 of the male organ and the rise of the testes, gives 
 the exact appearance of the female, and this may 
 last from birth for many years, or till death. It is 
 not long since a young lady in Dublin, who was in 
 the beau monde, astonished it by turning into a 
 bond fide gentleman. Such instances as this have 
 induced a common error that all girls can be 
 changed to boys. Madame de Stael tells us that, 
 when she was young, she passed many hours in 
 jumping, having been told that it would convert 
 her into a male. It is more to the purpose of my 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SEX 35 
 
 argument to mention that both the male and 
 female organs, as well as the breast^, can actually 
 be p£rmangntly enl§jg.ed to q^ny extent by means 
 of an afr-pump, or any kind of receiver with a 
 tube which is exhausted by the breath. There 
 are — not very reputable — physicians who prac- 
 tise this. I have even seen their advertisements 
 in American newspapers. 
 
 There are also women who have moustach.es, 
 and even beards, of which I have seen extraordi- 
 nary cases. In all these instances there is gener- 
 ally a voice inclining to the masculine, with other 
 virile manifestations, such as a strong will, and 
 unusual, energy, or great se^^ual pSSoii. Per 
 contra, males who manifest the female in their 
 organs show in exact degree the female in mind 
 as in voice. I have seen an American Indian who 
 was said to be a hermaphrodite. He certainly 
 had ' all the looks ' of a woman, with a piping 
 female voice. 
 
 All of these examples, and many more in which 
 books on physiology abound, confirm strictly the 
 theory that in exact proportion to male develop- 
 ments in woman, or the female in man, there is a 
 corresponding masculine or feminine degree of men- 
 tality. This granted, it may be admitted that 
 there must be, in accordance with what there is 
 left of the other sex in all of us, just so much of its 
 mind. And if it were not so, the whole condition 
 of humanity would be very different. 
 
 And as there is, beyond all question, in every 
 
 3—2 
 
36 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 human being a separate Intellect of some kind, 
 which thinks thoughts (as is shown in the elaborate 
 construction of dreams) quite separate from our 
 own, or those of waking reason, it is far more 
 sensible to believe in such an existence than that 
 our own mind during sleep works in an entirely 
 different field. And, granting this difference, it is 
 in naught absurd that we should try whether it 
 be not possible to bring about something like har- 
 mony and mutual intelligence between the two. 
 
 In which investigation and study I am reminded 
 of the naive observation of an Italian philosopher 
 of the sixteenth century, who remarked : ' Seneca 
 tells us in his book De Natural., Quest. 6, that 
 *' there are many things in Nature which man 
 knoweth not as yet, yet over which they who 
 are to come will greatly consider. . . . For truly 
 there are in Nature many things passing secretly 
 and unknown to us, which will yet be revealed."' 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FEMALE MIND IN MAN : ITS INFLUENCE ON THE 
 INNER SELF — OCCULTISM AND SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 Macrobius in his Saturnaliorum (lib. vii.) declares that 
 * Jupiter is the Earth and Juno his wife and sister, who here 
 means the Female principle, the Air, which also expresseth the 
 Allegory that Woman ^came from Man even as Man was 
 born of God. And as Man is to the Earth so is Woman in 
 her lightness to Man.' 
 
 There has been much writing of late years, 
 especially among Theosophists and Occultists of 
 all kinds, regarding what is called the Subliminal 
 Self, the Hidden or Inner Soul, the Unknown 
 Me, or Unconscious Cerebration. And no great 
 wonder either, because the subject is at first 
 sight not only deeply mysterious and strangely 
 curious, but it, beyond all question, involves or 
 suggests a vast amount of phenomena which 
 Science is as yet incapable of explaining. The 
 Mesmerist, the Hypnotist, the Christian Faith 
 Curer, all fall back on this Esoteric organization, 
 and adapt it to their theories. And as it may, or 
 must, be granted that man thinks, in a way, in 
 dreams when his conscious mind and will are cer- 
 [37] 
 
38 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 tainly asleep, it is apparent enough that another 
 Self of some kind exists. 
 
 I believe that this other Self is nothing else but 
 the Alternate Sex in us, or the female nature in 
 man and the male in woman, asserting itself when 
 it can at certain times, under certain conditions. 
 But it is so deeply and mysteriously allied to all 
 the faculties and powers of man which are not 
 identified with practical reason or waking common- 
 sense, that its investigation casts great light on 
 many subjects which all psychology has hitherto 
 regarded as inexplicable. 
 
 Firstly, then, admitting that the feminine mind 
 in Man is the controlling influence in dreams, it 
 may be noted that whenever we fall into a brown 
 study, even while awake, there often steal subtly 
 and strangely into it real dreams. Dendy and 
 Macnish, both sober Scotch writers on such sub- 
 jects, assert, if I remember rightly, that even the 
 nightmare declares itself under such conditions, 
 and is then termed ' daymare.' In this manner 
 unconscious cerebration spreads itself over con- 
 scious thought, as a film of oil spreads over a 
 pond without excluding the light. This merits 
 attention, because under many other circum- 
 stances there is a blending of the two, and mutual 
 influence without direct identity or combination. 
 But the gentle and imperceptible manner in which 
 the Dream, or curious and strange thoughts glide 
 unbidden into our brown studies, is altogether 
 feminine. ~'^ ^ 
 
THE FEMALE MIND IN MAN 39 
 
 And here I appeal to my lady readers to confirm 
 the assertion that while the same phenomenon is 
 not so common with them as with man, the 
 Thoughts when they do come unbidden, do so 
 more abruptly and strongly — that is to say, in a 
 more masculine manner than with nous autres. 
 For that they do I am well assured. Even in all 
 ordinary life, when an original idea born of reflec- 
 tion strikes a woman, she announces it with more 
 suddenness or emphasis than a man would, as all 
 may verify with little observation. 
 
 It is doubtful whether, were it not for the female 
 ' mind ' in Man, he would ever conceive, or feel, or 
 write poetry at all, or yield to any se sthetic influ- 
 ences, or perhaps even invent anything. For 
 without being specially a poet, she supplies the 
 material and the force, or the contrasts and vivid 
 imagery, the ' grotesqueness ' of poetry. Without 
 her in himself, Man would remain in many respects 
 a mere machine, or almost a brute. And this is 
 the proof thereof. 
 
 Whenever a man abstracts his mind from the 
 ordinary waking causes of habitual thought, he 
 invites the Dreamer. It may be to compose a 
 poem or a booCT to plan a picture or invent a 
 machine or think of a business combination or 
 argument for a case in law. That is to say, he 
 begins to draw on his memory for new material, 
 hoping that fresh combinations and as yet un- 
 realized results, or Ideas, will ensue from them. 
 He invariably in such cases hopes and tries for 
 
40 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 Chances. Now it is just the business of the Lady 
 of the Dream to know where the needed images 
 are stored, and to throw them together helter- 
 skelter or loosely by association, and the mascu- 
 line reason when this is done for it — which it could 
 never do for itself — knows how to work it up logi- 
 cally and practically. Whenever we think on one 
 subject, and new ideas ' out of the common ' begin 
 to suggest themselves, we may be sure that our 
 inward librarian is getting down the books for us. 
 So when Nature finds an organism, a unit 
 beginning from some ' fortuitous assemblage of 
 atoms,' she supplies material and forces, but there 
 is withal ever in it a developing, a guiding Idea, 
 or apparently self-conscious Unity which we can- 
 not explain. Even so, Carpenter, after examining 
 all the physiological bases of Thought, was com- 
 pelled to admit that there was a mysterious master 
 over all whom he could not understand. This 
 head of the republic is apparently the masculine, 
 ever self-conscious Reason. If I here appear to 
 fall into Mysticism, it is only the Conjecture in 
 circumstances or possibilities which Science has 
 not as yet explained. In such cases we can only 
 be guided by Analogy, which in this case, how- 
 ever, strongly bears out the theory . For, admit- 
 ting my idea as to the Dream, we shall find it 
 curiously confirmed in all that is regarded as 
 occult and mysterious, confused and as yet un- 
 explained in psychology, and in what many 
 regard as ' aberrations of the mind.' 
 
THE FEMALE MIND IN MAN 41 
 
 If we depended on the logical, hard-and-fast 
 common-sense of our habitual waking daily life 
 for new ideas, we should have no occasion to 
 abstract our minds, since what we know in it, is 
 familiar to us. When we think intently, and seek 
 for more, we always open the door more or less to 
 the Dream. 
 
 To illustrate this, there are artists, like Leon- 
 ardo da Vinci, who cannot at times get subjects 
 by thinking, but find them, or suggestions, by 
 looking into a heap of ashes or the like — just as 
 many see faces or landscapes in the fire. In like 
 manner our waking sense finds in the images 
 loosely assembled in a reverie, material and sug- 
 gestions for ideas. 
 
 Great geniuses, men like Goethe, Shakespeare, 
 Shelley, Byron, Darwin, all had the feminine soul 
 very strongly developed in them, and I believe 
 that Coleridge somewhere makes a remark to 
 the same effect. This feminine aid is not genius 
 itself, nor poetry, but it is the Muse which in- 
 spires man to make it. He could never write 
 anything truly original or beautifully varied 
 without her aid. Nor, on the other hand, 
 would woman create mentally and vigorously 
 without the aid of her masculine inner Mentor, 
 any more than she could bear a child per se. 
 The outer-world common-sense of Man gives him 
 a perceptive power of selection, or of putting 
 into proper form the material which his Muse 
 supplies. 
 
42 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 There are innumerable 
 
 * Plain and straightforward, true common-sense, 
 Economical, practical men,' 
 
 who do good work, and a great deal of it in this 
 world without any aid, or next to none, from the 
 Woman Within. But they rarely produce any- 
 thing original, or in accordance with Beauty, 
 because they lack Imagination. Now all of 
 Imagination is not due to the ,iimer-wom§,5i by 
 anylneansj but there would be none without her. 
 Thus by merely apparent paradox, Woman, who 
 is so rarely if ever a Humourist in real life, in- 
 spires all the Humour which exists in Man. For 
 he is conscious, while she is, unconsciously, what 
 Edgar A. Poe called The Angel of the Odd. 
 
 But to return to occult powers and influences. 
 I suppose that the reader knows what a planchette 
 is. No ! Well, it is a small thin board either 
 oval or in the shape of a heart. It has two short 
 legs on castors or wheels, and a third support 
 which is a sharpened lead-pencil. This is placed 
 on a sheet of writing-paper which is on a table. 
 If one, two, or three rest the tips of their fingers 
 on it, it will after a time begin to vibrate, move 
 about, and write. This writing is caused by the 
 unconscious thinking of some one of those who 
 touch it. That it is not by the direct action and 
 will of a performer is evident, because no one 
 person could write with it in company with others. 
 But if the reader would get a planchette for him- 
 
THE FEMALE MIND IN MAN 43 
 
 self — and I have seen them for sale for a shilling 
 or two each in the Burlington Arcade — he can be 
 convinced forthwith by experience that it ' writes 
 of itself.' 
 
 That which inspires the strange gleams of sense 
 or wisdom occuring from time to time among 
 the nonsense which prevails in the planchette- 
 oracle, is the Spirit of the Dream, in which there 
 is invariably about the same proportion of har- 
 mony or confusion. I have already asserted that 
 it is this very confusion and paradox which gives 
 suggestion and new ideas to the seeker, so in the 
 oracles of old, as in the planchette committee, 
 there is invariably some one to pick up the flying 
 leaves, adjust and explain what is on them. For 
 the Lady of the Dream is in most cases as much 
 given to dramatic mystery as was the Pythoness 
 of old, wherein she bears a likeness of identity to 
 all women, since Eve, who was the first femme 
 incomprise. For truly no person of sense has ever 
 yet been able to understand what really possessed 
 her to eat the apple. But to return to Planchette, 
 no one who has fully and dispassionately examined 
 its utterances will deny that they bear the femi- 
 nine impress. 
 
 Now, while sober mascuUne, waking conscious 
 Thought is nothing if not sure and direct, it is the 
 general consensus or verdict of mankind that all 
 mental manifestations in Women are uncertain, 
 Walter Scott adding thereto his opinion that she 
 was ' coy and hard to please,' wherein few will 
 
44 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 agree to differ from him. So the answers of all 
 oracles, and knowledge drawn from occult, sugges- 
 tive, or even aesthetic sources, is uncertain — a 
 treading among quicksands which may over- 
 whelm us or yield us gold. There is more 
 depth and strength in this theory of the identity 
 of the Uncertain and the Feminine than appears 
 at first sight. And there is nothing in which it is 
 so apparent as in modern Occultism, beginning 
 with Spiritualism. 
 
 I believe it was Huxley who spoke of this faith 
 or art as ' intellectual whoredom.' Objection 
 may be taken to the refinement of the simile ; ' an 
 aunt,' as the French saying is, ' would not permit 
 her niece to use it ' — for some unexplained reason 
 aunts in France are regarded as the strictest 
 guardians of the proprieties — but there can be no 
 question that the subject vividly suggested to the 
 great scientist the feminine element. For, in spite 
 of the immense amount of curious phenomena 
 which it presents, there is in it such a vast pre- 
 ponderance of the Inexplicable, the Fantastic, 
 and the Contradictory — that is, of the Uncertain 
 — that Science cannot in conscience admit the too- 
 far-advanced claims of its leaders. 
 
 Yet there is in it all beyond doubt much fact or 
 latent truth as yet obscured by ignorance of 
 natural laws or ' unrevealed conditions.' Why 
 the spirits themselves, who must know the most 
 about it, have not long ago revealed all the secrets 
 of molecular or atomic harmony, electricity, ether, 
 
THE FEMALE MIND IN MAN 45 
 
 or sub-ether, and other forces on which their life 
 depends, if they do ' live ' at all, is very perplex- 
 ing. That there are facts to be known and real 
 wonders to be explained, all men of sense believe. 
 Meanwhile, be it observed that all this living in 
 what the old romance of Graysteele calls ' the 
 Lande of Doubte,' is like the Dream in exact 
 proportion feminine. It gives us shy glimpses 
 of wonders, fitful glances of the marvellous and 
 terrible, intermingled with the nonsensical and 
 commonplace, not to say abjectly silly, and alles 
 wie im Traum, all as we would expect to find it in 
 a vision — or under the guidance of witches — for 
 in truth no one would ever suspect wizards of 
 such cantrips. And it is really worth remarking 
 that in all legends of diablerie it is the Witch who 
 is supposed to be the wildest and most devoid of 
 reason. 
 
 But this leads us to more serious and substantial 
 facts, which I will discuss in another chapter. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MALE INTELLECT IN WOMAN 
 
 The action of the masculine element in the con- 
 stitution, on the female intellect, is — as may have 
 been expected — less marked, less peculiar; we 
 may say less interesting than that of the feminine 
 in man. 
 
 For, as in the other sex, Man or the inner self, 
 only representing so much of his sex as the great 
 early struggle of the germs left in the ovum, is 
 here a set-aside being, a quantiU negligeable, with 
 relatively much less to do than his counterpart, 
 the Lady of the Brain. For the slave or sub- 
 ordinate in the one case has a strong master who 
 knows how to turn his work to account — even 
 as the owner of a diamond mine knows how to 
 have cut and sent to market the gems which his 
 slave finds. ' The males — or the more katabolic 
 organisms — are more active, energetic, eager, pas- 
 sionate and variable ; the females more passive, 
 conservative, sluggish and stable. The former, 
 as Brooks has especially emphasized, are very 
 frequently the leaders in evolutionary progress, 
 [46] 
 
THE MALE INTELLECT IN WOMAN 47 
 
 while the more anabolic females tend rather to 
 preserve the constancy and integrity of the 
 species ; thus, in a word, the general heredity is 
 perpetuated by the female, while variations are 
 introduced by the male.' 
 
 Therefore, where there is not a specially ener- 
 getic, inquiring, directing or creative mind, the 
 revelations of the Dream in a reverie are less 
 attended to than in the reverse case. Now, be it 
 observed, that while the male intellect in woman, 
 put away in the garret, being, as masculine, less 
 fantastic, and given to making Memories dance in 
 ballets, masques, corantos, sarabands and jigs, 
 there are in consequence fewer of these games ; 
 that is to say that Wonien dream le^^^^^ 
 than men, and that indeed so very much less so 
 as to render it remarkable that so many of yore 
 had visions of having given birth to torches and 
 eagles, rivers, and all kinds of oddities — it being 
 significant that it was almost always something 
 concerning generation and proci,§atiyeness. And 
 again, of old there was Temide (Eurip. Iphig., 
 V. 1259), who in a dream revealed the awful secrets 
 of the gods {ibid., v. 1271) : 
 
 * La dea Temide 
 Che allera scopnia in sogno 
 I segreti degli Dei.* 
 
 But I believe this myth is intended to set forth 
 the awful inability of a woman tQ, keep ,a,^^^S^^^ 
 rather than her power as a dreamer. Penelope, 
 
48 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 it is true, dreamed the return of Ulysses (Odyss. 
 19), but spoke of it with doubt, and as one not 
 accustomed to such phenomena. And with her, 
 it was, as usual, something personal. 
 
 Women, while they have better average worldly- 
 working memories than men — while they men- 
 tally record the names and appearance of people 
 and all which concerned themselves more accu- 
 rately, and for a much longer time, have, on the 
 contrary, no tendency at all to amass, like magpies 
 or crows, all kinds of odds and ends of recollec- 
 tion. Truly, I know not how it may be in fact, 
 but I dare say that among the former birds, who 
 carry the making of museums and stealing of bric- 
 £L-brac so far as even to select well-made celts and 
 other Neolithic remains, and old coins, for their 
 collections, it is only the males who display this 
 incredible love of vertu. However, it can hardly 
 be denied that in this respect — Vir unus prce 
 mille fceminis — ' a hat, indeed, excels a hundred 
 caps.'* 
 
 One cannot imagine a female Burton of the 
 * Anatomy of Melancholy,' a Rabelais, a Villon, 
 a Washington Irving, or any other of the minds 
 who, being filled and inspired with quaint, strange 
 memories of olden time, and black and silver 
 flaked, or mellowed notes of merriment, and jests 
 which, like the many coloured gems in a kaleido- 
 
 * *Unum capitium pluris est, qukm sexcentae calanticae. 
 Ital. : Val piu una beretta, che centi cappe.' — Monosini 
 Thesaurus, 1608. 
 
THE MALE INTELLECT IN WOMAN 49 
 
 scope, flash one another into Hfe — rush onward, 
 not to produce a work of art — as women ever do — 
 but to give way to emotion, and the art impulse. 
 Truly it is as if Memory, with such writers, were 
 like a balloon which is filled with laughing gas — 
 until in time it rises, and carries away its owner — 
 far over the clouds into a fairyland. 
 
 In Woman the Every-day Waking Self, taking 
 small account or little notice of what does not 
 immediately concern herself, her entourage, and 
 especially the dear children, makes small record 
 of such facts or fancies as would be of value in 
 true works of Imagination. As is the Memory, 
 so the Dream will be, and as the dreams, in truth 
 the poetry. That any woman should ever, in 
 looking over a room full of quaint antiquities, 
 take the least interest in anything as men do, 
 would be as unusual as one who did not exclaim 
 * How interesting !' There are exceptions. 
 
 Man in woman keeps a shop, but has a scant 
 supply of goods, and few customers — or a circu- 
 lating Hbrary, wherein there is no quaint or 
 poetic literature, though there may be plenty of 
 novels. I do not say that there are no women 
 who dream, for there are a great many, but their 
 dreams are not like Man's. If they were, they 
 would think and write like man. 
 
 Now, if there be any lady readers who think 
 that this is to their discredit, let them remem- 
 ber that, while the female soul in man is half 
 the cause of all his Genius — for he would be an 
 
 4 
 
50 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 awfully mechanical, reasonable, logical, Lack- 
 Understanding being or brute, without her — per 
 contra, the Gentleman in her brain is, though an 
 occasionally Useful fellow in his small way, not 
 to be compared to ' the party of the other part.' 
 
 Where he does display himself is just where he 
 might be expected by Scientific Induction to be 
 found, that is, more or less in the practical life of 
 such an eminently practical creature as Woman. 
 ' The spasmodic bursts of activity in males,' says 
 Geddes, ' contrast with the continuous patience 
 of the females.' This continuous patience means 
 ' common-sense.' Woman has, with all her gods 
 of fashion and vanity, more plain, sensible selfish- 
 ness than man, if we take the word in its true and 
 not in its restricted, meaning. 
 
 The Male element in Woman almost always 
 comes out whenever she determines to be what is 
 in America called a * Come-outer,' or one who 
 manifests herself in life. Thus Joan of Arc — as 
 the Rev. J. Wood Brown again suggests — was a 
 girl who had hypnotised herself into masculinity. 
 But she followed Ideals already created by others 
 before her. So did Catherine of Siena and Saint 
 Teresa, and the whole sisterhood. They were 
 maintained by male invention, and sustained by 
 the masculine element in their brains. They had 
 read Lives of Saints manufactured by monks — 
 the male, drawn from memory, is as evident in 
 them as the female is in sweet Francis of Assisi — 
 who had indeed but one idea, ' Brother Wolf,' and 
 
THE MALE INTELLECT IN WOMAN 51 
 
 *Dear Sister Cabbage,' and 'Cousin Rosy-posy' 
 — all as feminine conceptions as could be. It is 
 the same in Olympia Fulvia Morata, who lectured 
 by preference to Heidelberg students, just as 
 Lola Montez associated with those of Munich in 
 a club of which she was President. And it is 
 shown to-day in the works of many women who, 
 instead of developing the Ideal Woman, strive to 
 urge in their sisters an imitation of the homasse, 
 or imperfect Man, forgetting that in his own fields 
 Man always advances, as Goethe declares, a thou- 
 sand steps to their one. 
 
 This was amusingly shown in the controversy 
 as to whether women should smoke, which was 
 carried on some years ago in London newspapers. 
 In which it appeared that the great majority of 
 intellectual ladies were of the opinion that, to 
 surpass Man in great Virtues, it is necessary to 
 just rival him in small vices. 
 
 It was the same with ' George ' Sand and her 
 disciple, ' George ' Eliot, especially the former, all 
 of whose great works, or letters, were not only sug- 
 gested, but actually written in great part by men. 
 Thus ' Consuelo,' her principal book, owed its 
 origin firstly to a forgotten German novel by 
 Herlossohn, author of ' When the Swallows 
 Homeward Fly,' and secondly to some man, 
 possibly to Liszt. For it is absolutely impos- 
 sible that any human being who had gone to the 
 obscurest depths of old Bohemian mysticism, for 
 which a knowledge of Czech was required, could 
 
 4—2 
 
52 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 have written many other books in which there is 
 no trace of such tendency. Qui en a hu, boira — 
 he who has once tasted of that fairy-fountain will 
 show the intoxication for ever. And when George 
 Sand Dudevant writes herself, no author was ever 
 so free from it. One might doubt whether she 
 had really read her own work — or the one so 
 called. Her books recall the Exhibition of Pic- 
 tures by a noted actress, of which there were 
 forty in forty different styles — each correspond- 
 ing to that of the gentleman who had painted it. 
 George Eliot was undoubtedly a genius, as was 
 in her own way George Sand. But George Eliot 
 herself told me that she had read through two 
 hundred books in order to write ' Daniel Deronda.' 
 It flashed upon my mind to reply, though I 
 did not say it, that she would have done better 
 to talk with two hundred common Jews, and 
 have learned Yiddish. I doubt whether she 
 knew ten words of Lonsnekutish, or the holy 
 language ; and a Jew who greatly admired her 
 work admitted to me that without this tongue 
 no one could really penetrate into common 
 Jewish life. And the same lady in speaking of 
 her Spanish Gypsy, admitted that she had only 
 seen Gypsies or spoken to them two or three 
 times in her life. Pott says the same in his im- 
 mense ' Thesaurus of the Gypsy Dialects,' the 
 result being that it is full of blunders. All of 
 which indicates material and thought drawn 
 from works by men. I say nothing against 
 
THE MALE INTELLECT IN WOMAN 53 
 
 Genius, but when one pretends to make pictures 
 of real life, he or she should have known it — 
 honestly. 
 
 The chief reason why there are so few Un- 
 doubted Originals among writers, but especially 
 among Women, is not by any means that they are 
 wanting in the power to be so, but because they 
 all have the End in view — that is, the reward, or 
 honorarium. They invariably consider their art 
 as conducive to an object, else why work ? This 
 induces as a matter of course the keeping within 
 the liinits of what wiU be popular, and of being 
 ' in the swim,' all of which handicaps the innate 
 impulse to create, which is the soul of genius. 
 
 For with all the Culture attainable, and perhaps 
 with a fine perception of Beauty and Humour in 
 her Outer life, and living in light fancies. Woman 
 is not supported by much material from within ; 
 her inborn Gentleman not being quick or adroit 
 with his memories or aid, and her waking 
 Reason lacking more or less Man's power of 
 selection and co-ordination, derived from greater 
 experience and strength. Under all these con- 
 ditions the laissez aller and abandon of genius at 
 play, or even at work, are not to be expected. 
 
 But note well, oh reader — albeit many a one 
 among you, and especially many a woman, will 
 do nothing of the kind — that I do not say that all 
 of the sex conform exactly to this description, or 
 to these conditions. ' By the fourteenth horn of 
 the devil,' said Bastian, ' I did not mean that all 
 
54 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 the girls in Perugia are sono puttone, or of evil 
 life.' For most do vary from it, more or less. The 
 Woman in man and the Lady of his brain form 
 but a small factor in the general work of daily 
 life, and many could dispense with them alto- 
 gether. But that in all Art Woman is prone to 
 follow instead of lead, when she might just as 
 well do the latter if she chose, and ofttimes 
 better, I have, I trust, explained. And then 
 observe, with your spectacles well adjusted, that 
 there is no such great gush and crowd of geniuses 
 and originals in these hard times, even among 
 Men, those who write for the mob and for money 
 and for nothing else, and who would see Litera- 
 ture to the devil, and further, unless it paid; 
 being in anything but a light, but, on the contrary, 
 a very dark majority, or a gloomy thunder-cloud 
 of witnesses to the fact that ability or summariz- 
 ing with the multitude means the art of running 
 up a bill, and of being ' popular.' 
 
 Men to a certain degree aid and develop the 
 Lady within by supplying her with more material 
 for the Memory — that is to say, of varied curious 
 sorts, such as can be used in Art of any kind — 
 than Women do. And they call her into action 
 far oftener, and bring her to their aid by attempt- 
 ing to solve problems in life, writing poetry, con- 
 juring up visions of all kinds from within. Yea, 
 a thousandtimes where Woman does so once — 
 not that she does not think, oftentimes as cleverly 
 and bravely as the best of us — ' it is not there the 
 
THE MALE INTELLECT IN WOMAN 55 
 
 harp-string is cracked,' quoth'a. But the Sexes 
 cast their minds out unto the world and its 
 fashions and Dame Grundyisms and the Hke for 
 inspiration, and do not consult the oracle within, 
 who, poor devil ! has ever been kept down by 
 neglect and short commons, so that, like Ralph's 
 dog, who was never allowed to bark, ' when the 
 thieves came he couldnH,^ Which proverb is 
 worth some study by strict parents who bring up 
 their offspring so well as to take all the ' spring ' 
 out of them. 
 
 Now, if Women would pay more attention to 
 their Gentleman within, feeding him better, giving 
 him brave and generous and liberal thoughts, not 
 all of personal interest, they would find that his 
 intellect and power would increase, and repay it 
 all a hundredfold. 
 
 For it was a saying of yore, and one of great 
 wisdom, that while the more water you add to 
 your wine the weaker the wine will be, so, per 
 contra, the more wine you pour into water the 
 wineyer will the latter become — perdisti vinum 
 infusa aqua. For Man indeed feeds his prisoner 
 far better, while Madame is skrimpy to her own, 
 the result being, as usual, that the less the nourish- 
 ment the worse the work. 
 
 Now, it is a good thing, as I have elsewhere 
 shown, when the two can respectively fall in love 
 with their prisoners, as is genially depicted in an 
 old French play, whereby the well-being of both 
 can be immensely advantaged. 
 
56 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 It is to be borne in mind throughout this book 
 that it is nowhere asserted that the two sexes 
 have not a great deal in common, and that ex- 
 perience of the same hfe, education, appetites, 
 and habits assimilates them more and more. 
 For there are those who always jump to extreme 
 conclusions (and they are the very pests and im- 
 pediments of advancing truths or ideas), who, 
 grasping at what strikes them most in anything 
 new, and which they perhaps do not understand 
 in its relations at all, proceed forthwith to explain 
 with what power of sarcasm the devil has gifted 
 them withal to ridicule the whole. And I can- 
 didly confess that what I have written is often 
 open to such critics, for as a pioneer I have left 
 many a stump, and here and there a hole not 
 filled up, and it is eminently characteristic of the 
 class I speak of to require strictly of the pioneer 
 that he shall make a highway plus quam perfec- 
 turn, even to the toll-houses, or a side-walk like 
 that of a citizen of New Orleans, which, when 
 it was criticised by the mayor as not in order, 
 was waxed and polished, strewn with rose-leaves, 
 and perfumed with eau-de-Cologne.* 
 
 Now, to a certain degree, the alternate sexes 
 having charge of the deferred, or as yet unde- 
 veloped faculties of the mind, also necessarily deal 
 with the occul^ or what as yet appears to be such 
 to us. So, although Woman is objectively, or to 
 the World pre-eminently, mysterious, the male 
 
 * A fact. It occurred not long before the Civil War. 
 
THE MALE INTELLECT IN WOMAN 57 
 
 intellect in her, entering into the spirit of and 
 understanding dream-making and hypnotism, 
 mental telepathy, spectre-raising, and divination, 
 manages and aids them, as required, even as our 
 Lady does in Us. But, be it observed that all 
 of these phenomena in themselves are no more 
 works of Thaumaturgy or Miracles than making 
 chlorine gas or oxygen is to a chemist. So we 
 find women predominant as media, and as the 
 visited by Saints and the Virgin, their inner 
 goblin doing most obligingly in any form required 
 any kind of theatrical work to order. For, as 
 men can and do hypnotize or conjure both sexes, 
 so women have also a double action. 
 
 And be it carefully observed, ' for herein is 
 wisdom ' — abundat hie sapientid — that while the 
 male in woman develops himself abundantly as 
 an active, vigorous element in aU occult work 
 whatever, he does not show himself ranch as an 
 aid to invention or poetry, to very original works 
 of Imagination, Art, Humour, or the like, because 
 he is not called on to do such work from Without, 
 while as a reasoner of the masculine order, he is 
 utterly cramped and stunted or banished from 
 the Objective life. 
 
 As we are continually meeting — yes, perhaps 
 daily meet — in cities women who are gne-half, or 
 one-quarter, or one-eighth, or so on, male, these 
 being the mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons, metis, 
 and so on of Sex, so there are in the Inner Sell 
 similar half-breeds, all adapting themselves to cir- 
 
 /\ 
 
58 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 cumstances with perfect ease. The Greeks recog- 
 nised that such a being could exist even in har- 
 mony with Nature, and so beautified and ideaUzed 
 it as Sappho. But, in fact, the Sappho soul, 
 though latent or hidden, exists unsuspected in 
 innumerable women, and it would reveal itself in 
 poetry and art as in her, if those who have it 
 would, instead of following worn-out models, as 
 all women do, develop their own Imaginations. 
 
 As to the action of the male in female mentality, 
 especially regarding dreams and occult power or 
 capacity, active or passive, it awaits a vast 
 amount of testimony and careful examination, 
 especially from Women. For, while I believe 
 that my leading propositions are true — that is to 
 say, that my road through the wilderness has 
 been fairly well surveyed — there still remains 
 much to be done. 
 
 On proposing, while writing the foregoing, to 
 a young lady of somewhat more than average 
 intelligence and reading this idea of the dual sex 
 in us, she promptly repudiated it, being certain 
 that her own intellect was entirely feminine — 
 in fact, she was averse to being indebted to Man 
 in any way. I understood why, when she not 
 long after urged me to read, and lent me, one of 
 the works in which the Superior Sex is exalted 
 in every way, indirectly when not directly, above 
 man — a work, in fact, to make many a girl beUeve 
 that the male sex is destined to shrink away in 
 time to the relative proportion which the spider- 
 
THE MALE INTELLECT IN WOMAN 59 
 
 husband has to his gigantic spouse, or even as in 
 the Copopods, or Water -fleas, where the Hes 
 ' diminish even to a vanishing-point.' And if 
 any think that I exaggerate, let them get some of 
 this Uterature, and read it, when they will grant 
 that, according to all the laws of deduction and 
 logic, this is precisely that unto which these 
 Women-Righters are tending. ' Plus des vilains 
 hommes — vive la Femme P 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 DREAMS, AS INFLUENCED BY THE OPPOSITE SEX 
 IN US, AND AS INDICATING SEPARATE MENTAL 
 ACTION 
 
 * Somnium proprie vocatur quod tegit figuris, et velat am- 
 bagibus non nisi interpretatione intelligendam significationem 
 rei/— Macrobius : On the Dream of Scipio. 
 
 As every organism has its degree of intelligence, 
 emotion, or consciousness in exact concordance 
 with its physical structure ; as the instincts of the 
 bee are not those of the butterfly, nor those of 
 man the same as those of woman, so we may con- 
 clude that if any being has a corporal or bodily 
 quality or function in common with another, it 
 will also have a corresponding degree of ' men- 
 tahty ' resembling it. Natural History illustrates 
 and establishes this truth ad infinitum. So far as 
 bees and wasps resemble one another, they have 
 similar habits as regards forming homes, pre- 
 paring for their young, and the like. Thus, 
 though widely differing in many respects, there 
 are certain faculties in common wherein the wasp 
 [60] 
 
DREAMS 6i 
 
 is actually a bee, and vice-versa. It is the same 
 as regards Man and Woman. 
 
 It will have appeared from what is given in the 
 preceding chapter that in the struggle for sex 
 between the male and female germs neither ever 
 attains a complete supremacy or victory. Some- 
 thing of the female remains in the male, something 
 of the latter in the former. Therefore, there 
 should be, as there undoubtedly is, in accordance 
 with all analogy, a certain degree of feminine 
 mentality in Man, and of the masculine in woman, 
 which, however, in both adapts itself to certain 
 conditions, according to the law of variability, 
 without changing its original nature. 
 
 As the conquering principle, or sex, manifests 
 itself boldly and actively in life, visibly and prac- 
 tically, so the conquered, still existing, hides and 
 acts chiefly in that inner life or world of the brain 
 or self, which has only to a limited degree anything 
 in common with self-consciousness and worldly 
 experience. If we will consider the case of the 
 female mind in man, we must firstly recognise 
 that the latter pre-eminently fulfils all the condi- 
 tions of mental action, as set forth by Locke, 
 * On the Understanding.' He thinks according to 
 Sensation and Reflection, we might say, if he never 
 went astray, according to ' Common-Sense,' as 
 understood by Dugald Stewart and other Scotch 
 philosophers. He only draws from Memory such 
 images as are required for practical thought. He 
 is largely guided by Experience. All of this con- 
 
62 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 duces to reason and logic, which are waking 
 faculties, therefore he really thinks only while 
 self-conscious and awake. When he sleeps, all, 
 or nearly all, his thinking power sleeps with him. 
 The more these faculties are developed in him, 
 plainly and simply, the less does he dream, the 
 less is he influenced by all that is visionary, fan- 
 tastic, or imaginary. This is the primary prin- 
 ciple ; I do not here discuss exceptions and varia- 
 tions, of which there are many. 
 
 As the female mind in man is excluded from his 
 outer life, so does it retreat into those inner hidden 
 chambers of the brain of which self-conscious in- 
 tellect takes little heed. And as woman in or- 
 dinary life thinks and acts less from reason and 
 reflection than man, and much more from emotion 
 and suggestion and first myg^e^lion, so in exact 
 proportion do we find that, as an inner or hidden 
 mind in man, she displays the same character- 
 istics. For she is the fitful guardian angel, or 
 spirit of the Dream. 
 
 To understand the Dream, we must first con- 
 sider that it consists of images drawn from 
 Memory, lightly and more or less consistently 
 connected. To illustrate this by simile, we may 
 say that Man's reason during his waking hours 
 walks with pre-intent in a garden, and picks 
 certain known flowers, which it puts together into 
 a bouquet of a predetermined character. The 
 Lady of the Dream flits through gardens and 
 fields, culling at random flowers, blossoms, fan- 
 
DREAMS 63 
 
 tastic weeds, sometimes for their beauty, but 
 quite as often with no thought whatever. The 
 Dream is the action of a mind which has free 
 access to the vast stores of images in the memory, 
 most of which have been forgotten by mascuhne 
 waking wisdom or reflection ; and it disposes of 
 them with more or less aid from the latter. For 
 reason does not always entirely sleep, nor is the 
 female mind in man quite irrational, but often 
 manifests intention to a remarkable extent, pro- 
 ducing the dreams which, when remembered, 
 seem to be miraculous. Taking every condition 
 into consideration, all that we know of the Dream 
 indicates feminine influence. "^''^ 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MEMORY, AND ITS RELATIONS TO THE INNER 
 SELF 
 
 * Very few people know what the average human capacity 
 or latent power of Memory in Man really may become when 
 properly trained.' — Practical Education (1890). 
 
 When Paley employed his famous simile of the 
 watch, which he took without acknowledgment 
 from Sir Kenelm Digby — that is to say, if a man 
 should find such an object, he would conclude that 
 some other person had made it — he artfully sug- 
 gested invention and originality. But a thinker 
 would infer nothing of the kind, for he would know 
 that the mere maker had copied, or perhaps im- 
 proved it, from another watch, and so trace it 
 back to the clepsydra and hour-glass. 
 
 When Descartes declared that ' Cogito, ergo 
 sum ' — ' I think, therefore I am ' — was the begin- 
 ning of metaphysics, he omitted to state that it 
 implied three antecedent conditions — firstly, to 
 explain the subjective I ; secondly, what thinking 
 meant ; and thirdly, what ' I am ' or being is. 
 
 Even so, when physiologists in the last century 
 [64] 
 
MEMORY 65 
 
 assumed the cell as the beginning of life, they did 
 not consider that it consisted, as I have before 
 stated, of the nucleus, membrane, and nucleoli, 
 its greatly varied forms, or the protoplasm of 
 which it was made — every one of which re- 
 quired deep study to understand the result. 
 
 So, when we speak of the memory, most people 
 consider it as a thing per se, original in itself, ac- 
 cording to old-fashioned psychology, a spiritual 
 function — in short, a mystery. But modern 
 physiology goes further back, and analyzes it, and 
 finds that it is an aggregate of all the images or 
 ideas which we have ever received from Sensation. 
 Every one of these has its cell wherein it dwells, 
 like a prisoner or a monk, awaiting call. 
 
 The masculine mind has within its cognition or 
 knowledge a certain number of these images, but 
 there are millions which it never calls forth or has 
 forgotten. But the Lady of the Brain, being her- 
 self a mysterious, half-hidden being, seems to be 
 far more familiar with them. When reason and 
 conscious thought go to sleep, she flits about, and, 
 inspired by some strange power or half-determined 
 will, calls forth the conceptions, and by careless 
 association combines them into a dream. All of 
 this is done precisely in the spirit and manner in 
 which women talk and act — that is to say, when 
 they are very feminine, and do not use experience 
 and reason to any great degree. And it must be 
 remembered that the woman in man is only a part 
 of the general entire feminine mental organiza- 
 
 5 
 
66 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 tion, but what there is of it is entirely of woman, 
 womanly. The longer and more deeply the 
 reader will reflect on this, the more instances he 
 collects, the more will he be struck by it, or the 
 fact that all the special characteristics wherein 
 woman is, rightly or wrongly, popularly declared 
 to differ from man, are clearly manifested in the 
 development of dreams, and as I shall, I trust, 
 subsequently prove, in many other respects. 
 Even in ordinary waking life it may be observed 
 that women recall casually and unexpectedly, as 
 it were by a kind of inspiration, more memories 
 which seem to have been forgotten than men 
 do, without having what is known as ' better 
 memories.' I think that all men who have been 
 long married can testify to this, so that women 
 are generally the best living records of personal 
 experiences. 
 
 Woman is by nature mysterious, curious, and 
 inquisitive, therefore there is great fitness in her 
 being so familiar with the occult stores of memory, 
 as she is indeed strangely blended with all that is 
 occult and puzzling in our nature, as I will now 
 proceed to examine. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HYPNOTISM 
 
 While the alleged phenomena of Spiritualism 
 may be explained or denied, or relegated for the 
 present to the realm of the Doubtful — since it 
 must be admitted that all which has been done bj 
 the Society for Psychical Research has not brought 
 us to any scientific proof of the existence of ghost? 
 of any kind — it cannot be denied that Hypnotism 
 certainly reveals the existence of marvellous 
 faculties in Man, with concurrent mysteries. 
 
 Hypnotism is the absolute obedience to sugges- 
 tion. It may be exercised by one mind upon 
 another, or even by the mind upon Itself. If I 
 can put any person, male or female, into what is 
 called the magnetic sleep, that person will do 
 whatever I command or suggest him or her to do. 
 At least one in three of all men or women are 
 amenable to this influence ; the now really ex- 
 tensive literature on the subject proves this. 
 
 If I cast any person into a sleep or cataleptic 
 condition, and then bid him or her remember that 
 during to-morrow he or she shall do a certain 
 [ 67 ] 5—2 
 
68 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 thing at a certain hour, the subject, on awaking, 
 will have forgotten it all ; but on the next day the 
 person thus ' suggested ' will, at the appointed 
 time, feel an irresistible influence to execute the 
 deed proposed. Or he may be told to feel cheer- 
 ful, or work without feeling weary. Or he may 
 suggest to himself, or will, the same things before 
 going to sleep. In most cases the same result will 
 be obtained. Probatum est. 
 
 This is — a little too easily — explained as being 
 all the result of our Imagination. This word is 
 habitually used very erroneously. When most 
 people would convey the idea that any opinion 
 advanced by another is all a mere idle fancy or 
 bosh — i.e., sound or nonsense — they say, ' That is 
 all your Imagination.' But, as Imagination 
 means in truth simply the giving form to an Idea 
 by images — that is, in fact, expressing it more 
 clearly — it is absurd to make it a synonym for 
 nonsense. 
 
 Without Iraagi^nation there could be no poetry, 
 invention, or aesthetic expression. I have, I 
 trust, shown that the aid or motive force for such 
 mental action is probably due to the f emalej jjiul,' 
 within us. It is not per se imagination, but it 
 supplies from memory the material, and in its way 
 even the action or suggestion, for ideas which 
 masculine reason corrects and perfects. In 
 Woman the same result is obtained by a reversed 
 process. In her the man within is the Mentor. 
 
 Hypnotism is Imagination realized. The sub- 
 
HYPNOTISM 69 
 
 ject is made to imagine something which is sub- 
 sequently brought to pass. But the command, 
 so to call it, passes through the realm of the 
 dream, where it is recorded as an order to be ful- 
 filled. This is done by the female soul, who \ 
 thinks , while ^^^^^W All that we do while ) 
 
 asleep is effected by her. In woman it is the 1 
 masculine inner self who does the same. There- ^ 
 fore the Influence is often far stronger, more ar- 
 bitrary and frequent in women than in men, 
 though less used. 
 
 As an athlete, when he leaps a ditch or per- 
 forms any great feat of strength or activity, 
 pauses a moment before making the final effort, so 
 the mind seems to be prepared or perfected by 
 sleep for aU mental determination. It is the still or 
 alembic through which the wine must pass before 
 it is spiritualized or turned to true esprit. Hence 
 such proverbs as, 'Fortune comes to us while sleep- 
 ing,' ' Night brings counsel,' and ' I will sleep on 
 it,' which express a world-wide belief that wisdom 
 is digested by slumber — to which I may add : 
 ' Vir somnolentus invenit somnia ' — ' He who sleeps 
 will find dreams' ; ' Aner hupnodes eurSes onera- 
 ton ' — implying that during sleep we get ideas.* 
 
 It would seem, indeed, as if Nature, recognising 
 the saying that ' in the multitude of counsellors 
 there is safety,' or, at least, that ' two heads are 
 
 * From Gregorius Nazianzenus. In Italian Chi dorme 
 sogna. The French proverb, Qui dort dine, is perhaps 
 another form of the same. 
 
^o THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 better than one,' had so arranged it that a proper 
 judgment on any subject could be best formed 
 when it was submitted, not only to the reason and 
 logic of Man, but also to the Imagination and 
 subtle perception of Woman. This process of 
 handing over our ideas to Sleep, to keep them for 
 us awhile, is like forming fancies or verses which 
 are soon forgotten if we trust to memory, but 
 which, when written down, are not only secured, 
 but suggest improvements of themselves when we 
 read them over some time after. 
 
 The Dream does indeed of itself very often give 
 the subject of a thought, or something entirely 
 original — and it would be wonderful if, among all 
 the odd combinations of memories which it makes, 
 it did not — but its real function is to aid the 
 wisdom of the waking reason. Given a naked 
 beauty, the Dream, or our feminine inner Self, 
 dresses her up for society ; she fairy-godmothers 
 every Cinderella. Now, this does not fully explain 
 all the phenomena of Hypnotism, but it casts 
 great light on its nature, and reveals a law that as 
 all hibernating animals are far stronger, owing to 
 their rapid recuperation, for their very long naps, 
 or as a pedestrian can achieve a far longer journey 
 in the same time by dividing it into two or more 
 by intervals of rest, so we, by sleeping on a 
 determination, can carry it out more completely. 
 This resting and resuming our ideas, or the trans- 
 ferring them through another medium to give 
 them strength, is analogous to so much in Nature 
 
HYPNOTISM 71 
 
 that it will hardly seem to be a mystery to anyone 
 who will seriously reflect on it. 
 
 What is narrated of the marvels of Hypnotism 
 always involves something done which the Sub- 
 ject could execute without the suggestion of 
 another, if he or she had the will to do it — that is, 
 the mental strength and Imagination. These are 
 supplied by Faith — in this case meaning the utter 
 dependence on the causer and governor of the 
 sleep. Just so in Dreams, we are utterly and 
 completely at the disposal of the Lady of the 
 Realm of Visions, who often in Nightmares 
 humiliates us utterly as a punishment for late 
 suppers. 
 
 It is certainly true that the inner Me, or Lady of 
 the Manor of Cryptic Thought, as Guardian of 
 the latent mysteries of the mind and of memory, 
 is well acquainted with many marvellous, and as 
 yet hidden, faculties in us, meant to be developed 
 in the By-and-By, which she now and then reveals 
 prematurely. She was conquered in the first 
 battle for supremacy with Man, and put away, or 
 relegated, to the obscure yet responsible position 
 of taking care of the family treasures, as befell 
 Bertha in the French romance of Le Lutin du 
 Chateau,"^ 
 
 For, as the sternest and least imaginative 
 Science is now inclining to believe or explain the 
 most hopeless cases of mental telepathy, seeing 
 
 * A work by myself, as yet unpublished — more's the pity 
 for the good fellows who like merry books ! 
 
72 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 that they are really not more incredible than X 
 rays and wireless telegraphy, so do we begin to 
 discover that all our mental capacities are not as 
 yet known or developed, and, as the street-pedlar 
 in America was wont to say of his razors, ' There 
 are still a few more left where that came from.' 
 Dr. R. Osgood Mason, in his book on ' Tele- 
 pathy and the Subliminal Self,' has accumulated, 
 as Hood says, * wonders upon wonders ' enough 
 to satisfy the saint who longed for legends even 
 more incredible than any recorded in ' The 
 Golden Legend ' to ' try his faith.' And Thomas 
 Aquinas believed exultingly in whatever was 
 narrated of miracles, because it was impossible : 
 Credo quia impossihile est. But Science is now 
 beginning to lend a willing ear to beUeve in Any- 
 thing, because it is also beginning to realize its 
 own illimitable power. I say realize — not merely 
 conjecture. Thus, King Heidrek, in the old 
 Norse saga, thought he could guess any riddle, but 
 when measured with Odin he found out there was 
 One who was sure of it. King Heidrek repre- 
 sents the Science of the last generation, and Odin 
 that of the present. 
 
 All of these marvels are in a vague way known 
 to the Inner Self, and she plays with them as a 
 child brought up in a jeweller's shop may play 
 with diamonds. I believe that the first great 
 diamond found in South Africa was really dis- 
 covered as a child's toy. So did I once discover 
 that an image of Buddha, found fourteen feet 
 
HYPNOTISM 73 
 
 under ground in company with old Roman medals, 
 was given by the finder to his young ones to serve 
 as a doll. Then Reason, or the Outer Mind, finds 
 it or the latent power in the hands of the child, 
 and recognises its value. 
 
 So, as the flower precedes the fruit. Imagination 
 and Poetry precede Reason, and Woman Man. 
 Yet the same early influence ever reappears in the 
 perfected work, even as Paracelsus observes that 
 the Leaf, which is the hand of the tree, by mys- 
 terious palmistry ever shows in its ribs the whole 
 trunk and branches of the perfected growth. 
 This resemblance is indeed remarkable in such 
 trees as the lime or linden and maple. But, as the 
 pedestal in Romanesque architecture often re- 
 sembles the capital, so the root or base is like this 
 in our souls, that it precedes the flower, even so 
 Woman as the mother is the beginning of life.* 
 
 Creation of existences, the beginning of organ- 
 isms or of lives, is the casual or chance concur- 
 rence of certain molecules which attract or repel 
 other molecules and forces according to their 
 kinds. And as there is attraction and repulsion, 
 
 * I think there can be small doubt that Goethe, who was 
 in his youth so familiar with so much occult literature, took 
 his theory of all growth from the leaf, as if it were the proto- 
 type, from this fancy of the earlier speculator. The leaf of 
 Goethe is now modified to the cell. It is remarkable that 
 while Paracelsus regarded a leaf as a hand, it is in Gypsy, 
 as in Hindu, typical of the foot, pa/, hence patrin, leaves, 
 often laid to make an indication of journeying ; in English 
 Romany, /<a!/^;'««, 2^ foot-track — i.e.^ leaf. 
 
74 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 so are there limitation and expansion, as there is 
 birth, bloom, and death ; else the plant would go 
 on growing ad infinitum. But reflection on, and 
 the study of, the conditions of development, as 
 seen in Nature, soon render the idea intelligible. 
 And so matter, when really understood as of one 
 substance with mind, is understood as 'containing 
 within Itself the germ potency and promise of 
 Nature in all her subsequent developments — of 
 the vast universe of suns and systems, planets and 
 satellites, and of every form of life, sensation, and 
 intelligence which in due process of evolution has 
 appeared upon their surfaces.'* Yet all of this 
 development had for its beginning sporadic or 
 here-and-there chance groupings of molecules, 
 which Nature, as they seemed fit for something, 
 aided into higher form. 
 
 It is precisely in the same manner that the 
 images in our memory are casually thrown by the 
 Lady of the Dream into odd and fanciful combina- 
 tions, from which Reason or Judgment selects and 
 finishes into ideas. When our reflecting power 
 says to a chance dream or fleeting group of fancies, 
 ' Stop there !' it makes a Beginning, and is 
 obeyed. It must be obeyed. This casts much 
 light on Hypnotism and all the other occult 
 powers of the mind. The Will of the suggester 
 having once begun to act upon the images fur- 
 nished during a reverie or an abstraction of the 
 mind, or brain-study — as when composing a poem 
 * R. Osgood Mason : * Telepathy and the Subliminal Self.* 
 
HYPNOTISM 75 
 
 — very soon gets more or less complete command 
 of them. In precisely the same manner in hyp- 
 notism the operator begins by inducing sleep, and 
 from that to compelling the Inner Self to act on, 
 or combine and create, conceptions. Now, as 
 Sight, which seems to us to be a real thing per se, 
 is only the effect of the vibrations of ether in the 
 optic nerve, so are the suggestions in hypnotism, 
 which seem, however, to be as real as anything in 
 hfe. 
 
 I have observed that all writers on Woman, 
 especially the French, lay great stress on the fact 
 that she is in herself mysterious, inexplicable, and 
 ' weird ' (which really means ' strangely fore- 
 boding,' or intimating in a wonderful way what 
 is to come). This, as I have said, is accurately 
 carried out by the manner in which the female 
 inner self acts. This mystery is based on Uncer- 
 tainty, or less definite perceptions and grasp than 
 in Man. There is always something Weird, in the 
 true sense, in mere Chance. Hence the Dream, 
 like dice and cards, has always been regarded as 
 a source of Divination. 
 
 The phenomena of Hypnotism, or any other 
 branch of the occult, are, like the beginnings in 
 morphology, subject to Accretion. No one can 
 tell into what they may not be developed ; nor 
 is there any limit to the possible command over 
 matter which the human Will may attain. 
 
 It has been said in a poem that ' Every woman 
 is at heart a witch ' ; it might be said even more' 
 
76 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 truly that she is a devotee. I am often incHned to 
 think that here in Italy, with the exception of a 
 few old men who are beginning to take in sail as 
 their battered ships draw near port, there are no 
 really religious folk, save the women ; for true it 
 is, and something over, that every Zoccolante or 
 sandalled Capucin beggar who goes about solicit- 
 ing cabbages or ' bread, butter, sausage, cheese, 
 coffee, wine, rice, or raisins ' — all being fish into 
 his net — would oft and again return with empty 
 panniers to his convent were it not for the women. 
 They form the vast majority, and often well-nigh 
 the totality, of worshippers in the churches — the 
 which, considering the manner in which the Sex 
 is abused by almost all Roman Catholic writers — 
 and it is awful in real monkish literature — is the 
 best proof possible of their magnanimity and 
 Christianity. Now, as Religion is the combina- 
 tion of a sense of dependence on a master, allied 
 to a sense of mystery, its relation to Hypnotism, 
 which is the same thing, in fact, is apparent. 
 
 Now, if the reader, bearing well in mind all that 
 I have written, will read as extensively as he 
 pleases all the works on Animal Magnetism, 
 Clairvoyance, Telepathy, Mind-Reading, and the 
 like, he cannot fail to admit that in it all the 
 Female Mind is the predominating influence — the 
 mysterious fairy who lurks as a dryad in the 
 foliage of the oak ; the naiad who gives us flitting 
 glimpses of her beauty in the falling foam of the 
 fountain ; the witch who, flying fast and far in 
 
HYPNOTISM 77 
 
 darkness to the Sabbat, is seen by the flashing 
 Hghtning ; for, in very fact, works on Mechanics 
 and PoUtical Economy will ever be masculine 
 though written by women, and those on Poetry 
 and Occulta and Mysticism feminine, whoever 
 their authors may be. 
 
 Now, if we critically and justly balance and con- 
 sider all that I have written, it will appear that, 
 as the Woman within supplies the gold which 
 Man coins, there is small difference indeed as to 
 which is the Superior Sex in the transaction — 
 which ye may all reason out everyone his or her 
 own way, drawing everyone his or her own con- 
 clusions. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SENSIVITY AND LOVE 
 
 * L' huomo e dotato dalla Natura di due viste, V una caporale 
 che communemente si chi'ama Vzsfa; laqual da noi sopra gli 
 altri sensi e amata, V altra incorporeale, che e quella potentia 
 deir Anima, per la quale habbiamo conuenienza con gli 
 Angeli et in Corrispondenza di queste due viste, essendo dui 
 ogetti visibile et per consequenza due bellezze V una corporale, 
 et sensibile, V altra tntelligibile ed ideale, dimonstra Amore 
 come la Teorico versi attorno la bellezze ideale, h la Prattica 
 si giri circa la beltk sensibile, e corporale.' — Casoni da 
 Serravale^ i59i« 
 
 The reader who has been impressed by the beauty 
 and ingenuity of Darwin's theory of Sexual Selec- 
 tion, and how ' the females of all kinds have by 
 such selection added to their attractiveness,' has 
 doubtless now and then wondered what the in- 
 fluence was which attracted the sexes one to 
 another, quite separately from all merely sexual 
 affinity. For that the latter alone, without what 
 may properly be called aesthetic aid or percep- 
 tions of beauty, would have contributed nothing 
 to improvement is evident. What, then, is this 
 aesthetic attraction ? Why do creatures of many 
 kinds behold with pleasure vivid colours ? Why 
 [ 78 ] 
 
SENSIVITY AND LOVE 79 
 
 will ducks sit for hours contemplating with 
 special pleasure beds of purple flowers ? Why, 
 in Italy, as was noticed by a Roman poet of old, 
 does the leader of a string of cart-horses take 
 manifest joy in the cumbrous trappings or rude 
 ornaments which he wears ? Why do all common 
 steeds in the same country rejoice in red blankets 
 above all others ? Or why, in fact, do we see 
 beauty in scenery, in women, or anything ? What 
 is the explanation of this attraction for certain 
 characteristics of certain phenomena ? What is 
 Beauty ? 
 
 I conjecture that the beginning or basis of this 
 attraction is to be sought in a very subtle, and an 
 unknown (or at least not investigated), force in 
 Nature, which may be called Sensivity. In its 
 lower forms it appears to act, so to speak, as an 
 intermediary with electric polarity, or attrac- 
 tion. It begins to show itself in the lowest or- 
 ganisms. Every creature, as soon as it acquires 
 individual life, displays attraction towards, or 
 repulsion from,' other objects. It probably ex- 
 tends even into crystallization, if we adopt 
 Schron's theory that there is no distinction 
 between organic and inorganic life. Beginning, 
 therefore, as mere attraction and repulsion, or 
 as an element therein, Sensivity develops itself 
 more or less in every grouping of molecules which 
 attracts to itself or repels certain elements (or 
 assemblages of atoms obeying given laws), or 
 certain laws. It is in its beginning a force even 
 
8o THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 as electricity, galvanism, gravity, ether, and sub- 
 ether are forces ; as it rises, so to speak, in higher 
 organisms it becomes hke vitality or the so-called 
 vital electricity. And as it is developed, or acts 
 in new spheres, it manifests attraction or repul- 
 sion, through our sight as being attracted by 
 certain colours. Sensivity as it thus manifests 
 itself becomes even more and more like Thought, 
 and it may be more or less so regarded ; but as 
 all Intellect may be traced downwards to mere 
 emotion and association, instinct and sensation, 
 so Sensivity may be traced upward from inor- 
 ganic creation, through its association with other 
 powers or forces, into the action of the brain. 
 
 It is not to be denied that almost from the first, 
 or so far as we can trace it, Sensivity seems to 
 have in it, or to be in some mysterious way allied 
 to. Thought — at least, it will suggest to most 
 minds a subject or consciousness. Yet no such 
 thought ever disturbs the minds of those who see 
 a mimosa or sensitive-plant close its leaves when 
 touched, since they attribute it all to a nervous 
 mechanical organization. If we remember that 
 there are all over our body ganglions or imperfect 
 brains, which exercise unconscious cerebration, 
 or how, when the head of a tortoise is cut off, the 
 body still continues to function or crawl, while 
 the head exhibits the possession of as much in- 
 telligence as it ever had — i.e., by vindictive 
 snapping and biting — we can easily understand 
 what Sensivity may be like in its Lower stages. 
 
SENSIVITY AND LOVE 8i 
 
 All forces as they combine, acting and reacting 
 in matter, tend to produce higher organisms, 
 higher and more elaborate powers, more subtly 
 varied, or, in fact, new capacities. Thus, Sen- 
 sivity, rising from a purely material state of at- 
 traction and repulsion, and the point where 
 Organism develops into perceptible life, rises to 
 Intellect. Now Life, or the joint action of forces 
 making a force, was at first, of course, blindly 
 perceptive in the lowest grade, as where atoms 
 or molecules were formed, when the perception 
 consisted of simply obeying the laws of polarity, 
 when, indeed, all was blind, and acting according 
 to the primary force — beyond which there is no 
 passing. 
 
 Even as red or any other colour impresses Sen- 
 sivity, in accordance with certain laws of sensa- 
 tion, with pleasure — which is also a condition 
 determined in and by it — so the harmony of 
 colours, form, scents, sounds, and all things in 
 Nature are very rapidly associated and assimi- 
 lated by it. If we sometimes find a charm in 
 what is manifestly imperfect, or what departs 
 from the ideal of Nature, it is because our Sen- 
 sivity has, here and there, made Association of 
 the Agreeable to the Senses or the Fancy or 
 Imagination with certain Things which are not 
 beautiful; and this is, indeed, going on all the 
 time, as Art and popular Taste bear witness. For 
 Sensivity has grown with our growth, and 
 strengthened with our strength, and is not a 
 
 6 
 
82 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 perfect Mentor, but only a quick perceiver of 
 certain attractions, repulsions, and harmonies. 
 
 Sensivity is the peculiar force in us which by 
 attraction to the most successful — that is, the 
 most harmonious — experiments of Nature, aids 
 and determines their success. It is a marvellous 
 guide in all selection and affinity ; but for it natural 
 selection and human culture would not be ; or else, 
 like the boy who speculated who he would have 
 been if he had had another father, it would have 
 taken another path and been Something Else. 
 
 Now, as Light is not a thing by itself, but only 
 the impression made by so many vibrations of 
 ether on the sensorium, so is the Beautiful only a 
 sensation whose Ultimate is in us, not in Itself. 
 For a very slight alteration in our Receptivity 
 would have made the Madonnas of Raphael as 
 repulsive as so many scarecrows, or devils, or 
 any other anti-ideals. 
 
 Therefore, it follows that the sensation of the 
 Beautiful is, firstly — and the French writers of the 
 last century agreed this was the sole cause — 
 simply Agreeable Impression, as determined by 
 the effects of colours, scents, and the like on 
 our receptivity. Here, however, the men who 
 manufactured Thought for our grandfathers, or 
 great-grandsires, stopped. If the Beautiful was 
 agreeable, they argued, whatever is Agreeable 
 must be Beautiful. John is a thief, therefore 
 every thief is (or ought to be) called John. 
 
 But they left out of sight the great truth that 
 
SENSIVITY AND LOVE 83 
 
 Nature, consciously or unconsciously, as an Over- 
 ruling Mind, or as a blind correlation of forces, 
 follows an Ideal, and with or without Teleology or 
 intent to an end, advances in harmonious adjust- 
 ment of force and matter. This in its manifesta- 
 tions is Beauty, and it is far beyond the mere 
 impression of Agreeableness on our senses, which 
 are complexed with many jarring phenomena or 
 impressions. But our Sensivity, which was in its 
 beginning only a blind force, as it develops, 
 takes note of this harmony, and combines it with 
 the Agreeable. 
 
 The sense of correct shape and of proportions 
 is closely allied to the perception and enjoyment 
 of light, colours, and other phenomena which 
 reduce themselves in their origin to the law of 
 attraction and repulsion. Colour and shade 
 beget Outline arid^ Form, and Sensivity as it 
 becomes subjective notes this more and more, 
 just as our sight takes in more and more the con- 
 ditions of light and darkness. For this latter 
 condition varies immensely between the cogni- 
 tion of a babe and a grown person. 
 
 All correlations, or unities of force, by adjust- 
 ment, tend to higher conditions, and to intellect. 
 And throughout all Sensivity acts as a guide or 
 influence. It is in a sense the maker of mind. It 
 selects impressions. In its growth we can trace 
 how Man, step by step, rose to thinking, how from 
 mere sensation he advanced to hereditary instincts. 
 Few are aware of how much of our present 
 
 6—2 
 
84 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 thought is really nothing more than this, and 
 only a slight advance on the intelligence of the 
 bee and the ant. 
 
 As it is impossible to select any point in the 
 chain of being from the oldest mineral up to man, 
 and say : ' Here life begins,' so is there no place 
 where Intellect or intelligence is not ; for though 
 it fade gradually from Genius to Instinct, and 
 from Instinct to mere Sensation, or till the latter 
 is lost in mere force and its primary action on 
 matter, still the germ of Mind is always there, 
 capable of infinite increase and growth. Sen- 
 sivity is the beginning of mind in life. As Per- 
 ception, it selects colours and accords as har- 
 monies in Nature ; it comprehends by the same 
 law pleasure and pain, by which our nervous 
 system is organized. 
 
 It is well known to many, or recognised, that 
 Love or the mutual attraction between the sexes 
 in humanity is two-fold, the one being simply 
 sexual, and the other of an altogether different 
 nafure. This latter very often assumes the in- 
 tensity of a gassion . It may be found in mere 
 children in whom no trace of sexual attraction has 
 been developed. It is in a boy felt indifferently 
 for his young male or female friends. Very few 
 writers — Thackeray is among the exceptions — 
 have observed that in children and sometimes 
 in those of older growth it often assumes all the 
 strength of feeling which ordinary love attains 
 in many grown people, especially if we make 
 
SENSIVITY AND LOVE 85 
 
 allowance for the animal nature. Those who 
 observe its action easily pass it over or explain 
 it as Friendship, Affection, or Liking, just as they 
 explain most mental phenomena as ' all Imagina- 
 tion,' which, as Dickens observes, is ' explanatory, 
 but not satisfactory.' 
 
 Plato had been struck by it, hence the term 
 Platonic Love, which is generally regarded as the 
 mere first attraction or introduction to sexual 
 desire, so that, as I wrote long ago, ' That love 
 which is known as the Platonic, is, like most 
 tonics, very stimulating, and shows that what 
 begins in play is apt to end in earnest.' But it is 
 nevertheless true that there often exists in man 
 an intense attraction to others, apart from all 
 passion. It is the action of Sensivity making us 
 perceive not only beauty, but by subtle associa- 
 tion, and the power of awaking agreeable memo- 
 ries within us, attaching us to a certain person. 
 That we are thus attracted by an unconscious 
 Grouping of pleasing appearances and fascinating 
 memories (or, it may be, their mere after-impres- 
 sions) explains in a great measure why it is that 
 we so generally concentrate our love on one 
 person, and prefer the Selected perhaps above 
 all others on earth. That is as regards Selection, 
 for when a man begins to devote Attention 
 and Perseverance to any pursuit, as I have 
 shown in my book on the Will, he soon begins 
 to exclude or cast aside all other attractions. 
 Wherein, indeed, we have the Law of Growth 
 
86 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 exemplified to perfection, since every organism, 
 to succeed, must follow its peculiar and limited 
 conditions, obeying the impulse of its own force, 
 attracting its own kind of molecules, and reject- 
 ing all others. So we may say in very truth that 
 love for the selected one, or, at least, its cause 
 and law, may be found in all development, even 
 from the crystal upwards and onwards. 
 
 It would seem as if this Platonic love or 
 .Esthetic attraction existed in a great measure 
 :n the inner mind of man, and, per contra, in the 
 male in woman, because it is generally of an 
 obscure mysterious nature, adventuring but little 
 forward into open daily life, and therefore ex- 
 pected to lurk in the occult chambers of the brain, 
 among long-buried memories awaiting the call 
 of the Enchantress to awaken them again to life 
 at the bidding of some master Odin. It is true 
 enough that the Outer Self or Reason or Waking 
 Judgment receives aesthetic impressions from the 
 objective, or Nature, which would indicate that 
 our material to love, or be attracted to, is not 
 from within. But the Inner soul, especially as 
 the Feminine in Man, appears to have beyond all 
 question such a strange and capricious — ^if light 
 and fanciful — love for beauty and raystery, that I 
 am much inclined to regard Sensivity, if not one 
 with her, at least as a sister living in her house. 
 
 Therefore, it seems to me that in this matter of 
 Love, the Inner Intellect may have more influ- 
 ence than would at first sight appear. For the 
 
SENSIVITY AND LOVE 87 
 
 aesthetic attraction, in all save mere human brutes, 
 always precedes the sexual, more or less, and as 
 it is eminently mysterious while beautiful, charm- 
 ing we scarce know why, enchanting we know 
 not how, it would seem as if in truth it belonged 
 to the marvellous fairyland which is hidden in all 
 of us, and in which all that we ' do not understand ' 
 in the game of life has its home. 
 
 A large and very attractive volume might be 
 written on the subject of Latent Mental Associa- 
 tions, showing how, without revealing themselves 
 to Perceptive Consciousness, innumerable images 
 steal into memory, to be awakened with vivid 
 results of Impression or Emotion in our Waking 
 Thoughts. So we see a beautiful face or person 
 who in some mysterious way — perhaps we do 
 not remember or trace the connection — recalls or 
 suggests something which is allied to the charm- 
 ing in our past, where or when we know not — but 
 the spell is there, and if other charms come, per- 
 chance associated with it, then We are lost or won. 
 
 * Thou art gathered in a cloud, 
 Thou art wrapt as in a shroud, 
 And for ever thou must dwell 
 In the spirit of the spell.* 
 
 It is curious indeed to observe how the falling- 
 in-love and its progress is again like the Law of 
 Growth — that is to say, accretive and guided by 
 forces which conduce to form and end — that is, 
 when the beginning succeeds. 
 
 I am the more inclined to regard the beginning 
 
88 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 of all love as due to the influence of the inner self, 
 from a very strange phenomenon which is quite 
 peculiar to the Dream, and which it lends to or 
 blends with mysterious Association. It is well 
 known that in dreaming we often confuse pheno- 
 mena or thoughts to such a mad extent that (as 
 has often happened to me) we may seem to be 
 reading a story from a book, and acting it at the 
 same time. Or we may meet with two people as 
 one, or smelling a rose in the sight thereof. Fol- 
 lowing this idea, Wordsworth wrote the celebrated 
 passage which has so greatly puzzled several 
 worthy critics of Philistia : 
 
 * The Stars of midnight shall be dear 
 To her, and she shall lean her ear 
 
 In many a secret place ; 
 Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
 And Beauty born of murmuring sound 
 
 Shall pass into her face.' 
 
 Precisely the same idea had occurred long 
 before to a quaint Italian writer, Signor Guido 
 Casoni da Serravale, who, in a book entitled 
 Magia d^ Amove (a.d. 1591), speaking of certain 
 ladies, mentions the celestial music born of the 
 harmony of their beautiful faces. Yea, in the 
 same sentence he speaks of it also as being food 
 for the ear, wherein he outsteps the English poet.* 
 
 * * Mentre contemplo nobilissimo hospite, come porgendo 
 quelle Gentildonne cibo a 1' orecchio con la soave armonia 
 di quegli instremente, prestino k gli occhi miei caro alimento 
 con la celeste armonia nata dalla conformity de lor bellissimi 
 volti.' — Delia Magia d'Amore^ p. 21. 
 
SENSIVITY AND LOVE 89 
 
 When the Dream commits these contradictory 
 extravagances, she seems to take great pains to 
 conceal them from Waking Common-Sense, and 
 hurries them out of sight as our eyes open, as if 
 ashamed of them, as Eve in the story was said to 
 have trundled her unkempt and rougher children 
 out of sight when she saw the Lord coming. And 
 if they are once lost for a second, they are gone 
 for ever, unless you resolutely seize them to keep 
 the instant you are out of the vision. However 
 this may be, when we see a lovely face. Associa- 
 tion or the Dream-lady or Gentleman do most 
 assuredly suggest at times images or visions 
 strangely sweet and fair, as mysterious and mixed 
 and anomalous, as Signor Wordsworth's — I mean 
 Mr. Casoni's — compound of music and beauty. 
 And as it is by the same instinct hidden from us 
 — for Love indeed is all awaking dream — so it 
 comes to pass that we often do not know why 
 we love. And truly no wonder ! 
 
 For here, reader, we walk in what always was 
 from the olden golden time a wonderland, where 
 youths saw visions and maidens dreamed dreams, 
 and it will be an Eli&n realm unto those of every 
 time. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 OF ENTERING INTO HARMONY AND SYMPATHY 
 WITH THE INNER MIND 
 
 I PROPOSE in this chapter to consider the degree 
 to which the female soul in man, or the converse 
 in woman, may be developed, improved, and 
 rendered, so to speak, personal. As previously 
 suggested, science effectively proves that all 
 which is claimed for an Inner Me, or Subliminal 
 Self, or an ' Unconscious Cerebration,' a Spirit of 
 Dreams, a Director of Hypnotic capacity, a 
 Power of Divination, a Pythoness inspiring 
 Poetry, and Invention, so far as these things 
 exist in us at all, may be referred to ' the Woman 
 within.' 
 
 For without having recourse to Providence or 
 Teleology, it is true, however it came to be, that 
 there is in our brain a marvellous lumber-garret, 
 wherein are stored aU kinds of mysterious ' things,' 
 such as untold millions of old memories or images, 
 and a strange power of calling them out, and 
 making them dance in Dreams — that is to say, 
 of associating them in light fantastic combina- 
 [90] 
 
ENTERING INTO liARMONY 91 
 
 tion, just as a scrape or two from a violin-bow 
 in carelessly-fiddled chords will make sand dance 
 on a glass pane. 
 
 This last gift, as I have before asserted, is very 
 imperfectly within the power of masculine waking 
 Reason, which knows every one of its habitual 
 Images by sight, as an overseer knows his work- 
 men, and just what to do with them. And all 
 works of Genius, poetry, or of original invention I 
 depend on the supply from the Lady within, and ^ 
 her making them dance. And when the Master f 
 sees them with his reason and judgment, he 1 
 selects and perfects from it all, a work. And this \ 
 joint action of the Male and Female mind is * 
 Genius, as will be better understood and more 
 fully believed in, in days to come. 
 
 All of this belongs to the realm within of 
 Shadows, and it is indeed Weird in the true sense 
 of the word, or mysteriously prophetic, for it is 
 simply what is meant for future use in the history 
 of Humanity. Therefore, in accordance with the 
 old saying, ' as the land so the lord,' there is 
 placed as ruler over this country of the Occult, 
 or as soul to a body — and very naturally and 
 appropriately — a mysterious Sorceress, a just so . 
 much of Woman as is left in us, who having a >^ 
 firm lodgment in our body, with its correlative 
 of soul, had to be accommodated somewhere, and 
 was naturally enough sent like any poor relation 
 up to the garret to dwell, where, being of curious 
 nocturnal habits, she is heard knocking and 
 
92 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 buzzing about at night in Dreams. This con- 
 ception of the Woman as one in charge of the 
 occulta is in exact accordance with the assertion 
 to be found in the last novel which I read, in 
 which it is asserted that ' Women are multiform 
 mysteries.' I believe I could find something 
 equivalent to it in every one of the hundred 
 romances which preceded it. 
 
 From remotest ages, Man has believed in some 
 kind of an inward oracle or monitor, subjective 
 oracle or guardian spirit. The Rev. J. Wood 
 Brown* suggests to me that the 'Demon' of 
 Socrates was an original of this stamp. ' For it 
 was rumoured,' says Xenophon, ' that Socrates 
 had a daimon who signified things unto him.' 
 That the Lady within us is an absolutely separ- 
 ately thinking ' mind ' is proved by the unde- 
 niable fact that Dreams often exhibit as much 
 constructive power or thought as our Waking Self 
 or Reason would realize, and that these dreams 
 are completely and entirely different — as regards 
 my own, at least — from anything which / would 
 ever call up. It is not merely that they differ in 
 subject and association from all that I would 
 prefer — it is that they have an air and colour 
 as of some other man's associations and inner 
 life, a something repulsive merely by Unfamili- 
 
 * Author of an admirable work on Michael Scot, the 
 Averroist and reputed Magician; also of * Santa Maria 
 Novella of Florence/ a work to be read by every visitor to 
 the City of Florence. 
 
ENTERING INTO HARMONY 93 
 
 arity. It is as certainly the work of an entirely 
 different mind from Mine as can be. 
 
 This difference was observed by many, and as 
 it chiefly showed itself in Dreams, it is not wonder- 
 ful that thinkers imagined out of it an Intelligence 
 of the occult order. I will here give a very inter- 
 esting illustration as to how it was supposed to 
 speak sometimes to Man. I have in my posses- 
 sion a very curious old Cabalistic Manuscript, 
 translated from the Hebrew into Italian. It is 
 mostly filled with geomantical columns of 
 numerals, but at the end there is a treatise of 
 twenty-five pages, which purports to teach all 
 that there is of Magic. And it amounts to this : 
 that we begin with a long course of fasting, purifi- 
 cation, and prayer, burning of certain perfumes, 
 and using ceremonies like those set forth in the 
 Occulta of Cornelius Agrippa and many other 
 dealers in burnt groceries and apothecary stuff, 
 mixed with a kind of evil-smelling piety, or 
 adjurations in the name of Adonai^-pJehovah^J^ 
 Urieli^Samiel^J^and all kinds of El, and the devil, 
 the end of it being that, after aU this Voodoing, 
 you wiU hear within you a Voice. 
 
 ' And this Voice wiU converse with you and 
 answer aU your questions as to all Mysteries.' 
 And I have no doubt whatever that, after such a 
 course of severe mental abstraction, many CabaUsts 
 really came to hear it, and that it did communi- 
 cate to them many really amazing mysteries, or 
 what seemed to be such. For there are wonders 
 
94 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 in store concealed within, and unknown to us, so 
 that, as the Fairy said to Flaxius, ' even the gods 
 do not know what they know.' 
 
 This Voice is the Bathkol, or Daughter of the 
 Voice, a tradition dear to all orthodox Jews. It 
 is said that when there were no more prophets in 
 Israel, the Spirit of Prediction still lingered in an 
 Echo which was heard ringing in an Arch of the 
 old Temple of Jerusalem. There the devotee 
 made his suppUcation, and heard in the resound- 
 ing final words an answer g 
 
 * " And wilt thou grant my prayer, thy suppliant bless ?" 
 To him the Voice replied in answer " Ess." ' 
 
 This was Yes. The same sorcery exists among 
 the peasants not far from where I am writing. 
 They throw a pebble into a well, and hear in its 
 sound an answer. So do many men, after con- 
 sidering a thing, come to a conclusion which is an 
 echo of their unconscious foresight, and act upon 
 it. It is really all the same thing, or the Daughter 
 of the Voice re-echoing. 
 
 Apropos of which term my friend the Rev. J. 
 Wood Brown suggests that the word Daughter 
 is significant of the female element. Else, how 
 came it that the Jews, after believing that all 
 prophecy came from the tremendously masculine 
 Giver Jehovah, do attribute His last utterances 
 to the Daughter ? 
 
 It is apparent enough from the facts which I 
 have adduced that this independently creative 
 
ENTERING INTO HARMONY 95 
 
 mind within us plays an active part in all which 
 we call the Imagination. It is not all of the 
 Imagination, but no work of the Imagination 
 could be perfected without it. It supplies stage 
 and scenery, actors and situations, or leading 
 points ; but the sober working Reason of Man 
 writes out the play, and acts as manager. To 
 those behind the scenes who know how melo- 
 dramas are manufactured, this wiU be a good 
 illustration. 
 
 Great poets like Shakespeare, Goethe, Shelley, 
 Keats, and Byron, were men in whom the female 
 mind within had been more than usually de- 
 veloped. They had Great imagination — that is, 
 unusual wealth of imagery from memory thrown 
 wildly together as in waking dreams, and with it 
 the power to form it wisely. Thousands of men 
 have this latter faculty, very few the former. In 
 fact, all the smaller poets have the former ability. 
 How many there are like Firmilian in Aytoun's 
 comedy, who could achieve masterpieces if they 
 could only get the Idea, or suggestion. 
 
 It is the Dream-lady within us who chiefly 
 takes note of the Beautiful or Unusual. Man, 
 when he does the same, according to Ruskin, or 
 other instructors, doubtless accumulates a great 
 deal of lore, and many ideas, but the result of it 
 all is only second-hand works. The curse of 
 Literature to-day is the authors who make books 
 out of books, and the literary gentlemen who 
 write about one another, suggesting the people 
 
96 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 in the Scotch village who all subsisted by taking 
 in mutual washing, which is indeed the raison 
 d*etre of the highly honourable fraternity of Poli- 
 ticians. 
 
 It may be superficially objected to this that if, 
 as Geddes remarks, ' Man is more original than 
 woman, having more cerebral variability,' it is 
 absurd to say that, as a poet, he owes all his best 
 inspiration to her. But the question is not of 
 Woman as a whole, nor indeed of Man by himself, 
 but simply of the supplying Images from Memory, 
 and throwing them casually together, to be co- 
 ordinated by Reason and Reflection. This pro- 
 cess constitutes Imagination, and thus far it has 
 been credited solely to the ' party of the first part,' 
 or the Master. The Reason, or Judgment, or what 
 is generally called a man's Mind, is credited with 
 all that he thinks or does, but just as it was found 
 that the Ovum (which term or idea was all in all 
 sufficient for the old physiologists, per se) consists 
 of very different parts combined, which have, 
 however, varied their function by union, even so 
 it is true that ' the Imagination,' which plays such 
 a role in popular metaphysics, has its divisions, 
 and those indeed ' marked and remarkable.' 
 
 It has always been admitted that all things in 
 Nature vary and change condition according to 
 circumstances and surroundings. Therefore, the 
 female mind in man, and the male in woman, are 
 not — and could hardly be expected to be — quite 
 like that of the sexes separate in person. This is 
 
ENTERING INTO HARMONY 97 
 
 a condition to be borne in mind as explaining 
 many apparent anomalies. 
 
 We now come to the consideration whether 
 this separate mind within us — which unquestion- 
 ably thinks in its way quite independently from 
 ours, yet which as certainly supplies us with 
 material for thought — can be in any way made 
 personal, or realized, or brought into harmony 
 with the waking mind or common sense. For 
 that Something of the kind is possible is suggested 
 by many of its manifestations. And it is a mar- 
 vellous truth, which is as marvellously borne out 
 by curious facts hitherto untested, that in the 
 greatest poets or men of Imagination the Lady 
 of the Brain manifests herself to such a degree 
 that it would hardly astonish us to know that 
 she was to them at times as a real, or at least an 
 audible, Presence, or, as one sang : 
 
 * I see thee not, yet oft I hear 
 Thy soft voice whispering in my ear, 
 Soft as the silver tones which fell 
 From the sweet harp of Israfel.' 
 
 In this we must firstly consider that hitherto 
 the Lady of the hidden life has never been recog- 
 nised as existing at all. She has dwelt, as I hav6 
 before said, in the forgotten garret or lumber- 
 room of the brain amid the past, listening all day 
 in the dusty sunshine to some chance bee or blue- 
 bottle buzzing or humming news of the outer 
 world, aU life unknowing and to life unknown, 
 till night came and she sallied forth, and then, 
 
 7 
 
98 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 indeed, one might find with the gentleman in the 
 Ballads of Bon Gaultier, ' That the larking had 
 begun.' 
 
 But though, like the German student of the 
 Carceri poem, she in her nightly revelling made 
 such a Skanddl that all the town heard it — that 
 is to say, constructed such fearful dreams as to 
 convulse the Dreamer, who knew very well that 
 he did not think them — She never had any re- 
 cognition as a separate being. 
 
 Now, as she is in herself half the Imagination, 
 I should think that by its aid she might be brought 
 as a personality to experience, just as there are, 
 according to old northern witch-Lore, means of 
 inducing mermaids or water-nymphs to rise to 
 the surface of the sea ' on silent summer days, 
 when all is fair.' Music and Song were chiefly 
 used to lure them up ' To the deadly light of 
 day.' 
 
 And, by the way, the Jesuit Kircher gives the 
 very lyric employed in Sicily to entice fish.* But 
 no one seems to have ever dreamed that this 
 Angel fish could be caught, or this Naiad wooed 
 and won. 
 
 Now, if a man, aided by Foresight — which is 
 the deliberate and perfectly completed intelli- 
 gence of what we want — will direct his Will unto 
 anything, he may achieve wonders. The be- 
 
 * The reader may find this curious incantation in ' Have 
 You a Strong Will ?' by Charles Godfrey Leland. London : 
 Philip Wellby, 6, Henrietta Street, W.C. 
 
ENTERING INTO HARMONY 99 
 
 ginning of Will to achieve great results should 
 be on a small scale, and often separated, on the 
 great oak and little acorn plan. If we, before 
 going to sleep, think very comprehensively over 
 what we want, so as to fully know our own mind 
 — which many clever people never did in all their 
 lives — and resolve that it shall come to pass, it 
 will be forgotten in our slumbers, and perhaps 
 next morning when we wake, but when the time 
 comes It will come and manifest or realize itself 
 according to Circumstances. So, thou who 
 doubtest — thou who sneerest in reviews at what 
 thou hast never tried — try this, and if thou hast 
 a normal mind^ and square horse, or even pony 
 or donkey sense, thou wilt find it is true, even 
 unto thy astonishment. 
 
 If the Will be thus awakened many times, and 
 the process deliberately and thoroughly renewed, 
 we shall come to a state of perfect and undoubting 
 self-confidence and calm reliance on our will, or 
 self, which is beyond question the greatest mental 
 blessing which Man can enjoy. But it does more 
 than this — it enables us to achieve wonders in 
 that realm of the so-called Occult, and to work 
 miracles by aid of Imagination, which, as I have 
 shown, is not a merely ' ideal,' or fanciful idle 
 faculty, but a very strong power when properly 
 applied. 
 
 I have already described how, according to a 
 Cabalistic manuscript, the Daughter of the Voice 
 may be heard within us after a long course of 
 
 7—2 
 
loo THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 magic discipline. This is nothing more nor less 
 than bringing the will by a somewhat differently 
 coloured process to the same end. ' You may 
 call it cognac or gin, but it is all the same whisky, 
 in fact '; so, by applying the mind to it, especi- 
 ally if we aid the process by prayer, repeating 
 this unto familiarity, when faith results we shall 
 have the same reward as the Cabalist, but in a 
 far purer and clearer form. 
 
 For if the Lady within can devise long and 
 sensible discourses, or those which are ingenious ; 
 if I can talk with a gypsy in a dream in Romany 
 — as I did last night, April 4, 1902 — or near a 
 song in sleep and remember it when I awake, 
 finding it fit to publish, it is not going far afield, 
 I ween, to bring her to a Voice. ' And he closed 
 his eyes, and called Her, and rested a time till a 
 Voice which was not a Voice, and in words which 
 were not heard but felt, replied : " Adsum, here 
 am I, Master ; what wilt thou of me ?" ' 
 
 If this were anything great or difficult, as it is 
 to a degree when incantations, long starvation, 
 with total abstinence and fumigations are re- 
 quired, it would be a different matter. But it 
 is simply to lead into a new form of expression 
 the Inner Mind, which talks often and long and 
 fluently enough, as is to be expected of a woman, 
 when left to herself. 
 
 The Dream-Lady has wonderful gifts. I have 
 experienced in my own visions aU the extremes 
 of dramatic display, the wonders of art, strange 
 
ENTERING INTO HARMONY loi 
 
 allegories, often so subtle that it was not till long 
 after, when awake, that I seized their meaning, 
 and nightmares or situations so trying and terrible 
 that I have suffered from them all the next day, 
 and marvelled in my suffering that such extreme 
 and causeless affliction should be mine. I have 
 never in waking life or Nature seen anything to 
 compare in many respects with what I have 
 thus beheld in Dreams, and after this the merely 
 materializing the process a very little, as in bring- 
 ing the voices which are heard in dreams into the 
 Reverie, is no extravagant fancy. Indeed, the 
 ' how to do it ' might come of the Dream itself. 
 We are fearfully and strangely near it, just as 
 Chemistry may be to the discovery of a glass, or 
 other medium, which does not refract rays of 
 light. It seems a far less unlikely thing than 
 the X rays did, or Schron's life in crystals,* when 
 this glass shall be discovered. 
 
 ' Why, then,' replied the Angel, ' you will be 
 able to see a grain of corn in Jupiter, or all that 
 all the Stellar folk are about, which will be very 
 amusing, I warrant you, especially in Venus. 
 But that is nothing as compared to what you 
 will hear when you may be able to talk with the 
 Queen of Dreams.' 
 
 This last remark suggests another idea. If by 
 any process of Will and mental discipline the 
 
 * It is not unlikely that, by following the path indicated by 
 Prof. Schron, the absolutely non-refracting medium will be 
 discovered. 
 
102 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 Inner mind with its fancies and caprice could be 
 brought to famiUarity and harmony with the 
 Outer Soul or Conscious Reason, though unto 
 ever so Httle a degree, then from that httle we 
 could evolve stupendous results. The units 
 could be multiplied to millions. In fact, any 
 individual of moderate mental capacity gifted 
 with some ' Imagination ' for a beginning might, 
 if he could awaken the Will within, develop it to 
 ' miracle.' 
 
 This would be just no more nor less than setting 
 a new kind of planchette to work, the difference 
 being that we should hear a still small voice, and 
 one which ' you cannot hear,' as contrasted with 
 the hands which beckon us away. But the plan- 
 chette is a clumsy contrivance, while a Voice is 
 subtle and soft, and may glide down as a Thought 
 into our deepest dream. Nay, there is in Dreams 
 a curious talking without words or sound, in which, 
 however, every word is mysteriously expressed. 
 
 Now, if there be men who have dreams in a 
 reverie without going to sleep, or while actually 
 awake, with Reason quietly watching round, and, 
 what is more, many who can thus bring them on 
 at will, as we all can, it is clear enough that the 
 Voice can be invoked, and, once heard, it may be 
 called again, and little by little made the means 
 of realizing all that Memory holds or that Imagina- 
 tion can desire. 
 
 There are people, old or young, who, whenever 
 they hear an air played, involuntarily fit words 
 
ENTERING INTO HARMONY 103 
 
 to it. This is also a faculty which no one has 
 ever dreamed of developing, yet which might be 
 cultivated to the improvising of poetry, as indeed 
 often spontaneously occurs among Italians. 
 
 But the great art of all is simply to think 
 earnestly and often that there is really within us 
 another mind, a second self, which has never been 
 recognised and ever neglected, and which, as a 
 discouraged and depressed younger child, hides 
 herself, as one who has been mortified and de- 
 feated is wont to do. By this repeated thought, 
 the shy fairy will become familiar, and little by 
 little a reality. It will not be enough to mechani- 
 cally ' think about it ' at long intervals. We 
 should muse and dream awake, and let the Idea 
 melt into our mind till it becomes, as it were, our- 
 self. 
 
 * I am only teUing you,' said the Tinker, * what 
 you could do if you tried. Kittles ain't so hard 
 to mend if you keep on !* 
 
 There is a kind of unwholesome small potato 
 which has very little in it fit to eat, but which is 
 covered with ' eyes,' and like unto it there are 
 men who, nothing in themselves, are still en- 
 dowed with wonderful Perception, especially of 
 defects and shortcomings. If they were guests 
 at the very best dinner ever given on earth, they 
 would enjoy the discovery of a hole in the table- 
 cloth more than all the dainties on it., And if 
 they are gentlemen of the press, and anything 
 went wrong, that would be their piece de resist- 
 
I04 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 ance in the literary rechauffee which they serve up 
 to the ' readers.' It was a writer of this class 
 who, when Carlyle first appeared, declared that 
 one might as well attempt to criticise a hedge- 
 hog. Which was a great compliment, had he but 
 known it, for the hotchewitchi, as gipsies call it, 
 is most delicious eating. Now, I trow such men, 
 taking no account that I am the first to adven- 
 ture into a strange and bewildering region of 
 thought \vhere it is hard to pioneer in any way, 
 will find much to chaff and ridicule gaily in the 
 ideas here advanced. All of which I mention, 
 not out of care for such would-be tormentors, 
 but to beg the reader to consider that this whole 
 work must be seriously studied, and that in a 
 kindly spirit. For as it took the writer a very 
 long time himself to assent to the theory which 
 came to him as if proposed by his own Lady of 
 the Brain — as he gave it due argument pro et con, 
 and gave in to it slowly — ^he opines that it deserves 
 fair study. And this is specially true of the pro- 
 position that Imagination is the concordance of 
 the Feminine contribution of fresh memories and 
 the dream power of casting them loosely together, 
 as in a hurried sketch, with the waking masculine 
 reason, which works it all into something coherent 
 or perfect. For the more I watch my own mind 
 and its processes of thought, the more does this 
 appear to me to be the true explanation of Im- 
 agination and of Genius in its degrees, great or 
 small, it being assumed that every human being 
 
ENTERING INTO HARMONY 105 
 
 has something of both, and that he or she might 
 have far more by developing the power within, 
 and bringing it into companionship, Cognition, 
 or sympathy with Reason. For it seems to be 
 supported by the most recent conclusions of 
 science as regards the origin of Life and Em- 
 bryology, on which indeed it entirely depends, 
 I having been greatly aided by such works as 
 The Evolution of Sex, and others cited in these 
 pages, but for which I could not have formed the 
 Theory, which I have perhaps but very feebly 
 supported, but which abler minds may prove or 
 disprove. 
 
 Now, to be practical, I myself have found this 
 to be true, as you may also, with small pains, that 
 if you begin with fore-thinking, and considering 
 the fact of the mind Within, and turn it over often 
 till it becomes familiar (as artists of superior in- 
 telligence view and review a picture to be), it will 
 be your own fault, and proof that you are not 
 among even the very moderately gifted, if the 
 spirit do not begin to seem to be a real presence. 
 You may not see it with your eye, or even the 
 mind's eyes, pseudo-visually or otherwise, but 
 you feel and know that it exists. Then, if you 
 wish to develop any subject intellectually, as to 
 write a poem, or acquire ideas for any work, and 
 will urge it on the Spirit, seeking its co-operation, 
 it will ere long, or on the next day, inspire you 
 with what you want, the process gaining strength 
 as it is repeated. The end of it all being that your 
 
io6 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 Imagination will be exalted and improved, and 
 greater union established between it and your 
 Judgment. 
 
 There are many people who go through life 
 alone without company or friends. Now, if such 
 read these pages — and truly they are to be deeply 
 pitied — and they are not of the flippant sneerers 
 and doubters and would-be ' funny folk ' in any 
 way — I can tell them that in this conception of 
 the Lady or Lord of the Brain, they may in very 
 truth get marvellous comfort, and have good com- 
 pany, whenever they will. And though it may 
 seem to thee like turning again unto the ghost- 
 haunted paths trodden by our ancestors, or 
 running after the follies of occultism, which to 
 do is to be held a fool by ' clever practical folk,' 
 it is none the less true that this thy Inner Self, if 
 long studied {fixis o cults intuetur), will be a com- 
 fort in thy darkest hours, and a friend in truth. 
 For thus wilt thou add to thy heaven a star — 
 stdera addere ccelo — whose light will never fade, 
 and ever guide thee to a golden end. And in the 
 silent watches of the night it will be as a fairy 
 visitor or an angel in a dream. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 OF MUTUAL INFLUENCE 
 
 There appeared in the year 1744 — it was a time 
 when the Renaissance of Magic, Free Masonry, 
 Astrology, and Alchemy had so swept over Europe 
 that few escaped it — a work entitled Hermippus 
 Redivivus, or the Sage's Triumph over Old Age and 
 the Grave, of which D' Israeli the elder has taken 
 note. It purported to show from an alleged old 
 Latin epitaph — forged by the author — that a 
 certain man had once lived to one hundred and 
 fourteen years of age, ex anhelitu puellarum — by 
 the breath of young girls ; and proceeded very in- 
 geniously and plausibly to set forth the theory that 
 a weakly or elderly person could regain lost strength 
 and even restore youth by living intimately 
 with or among juvenile or healthy and vigorous 
 people. This little work made a great sensation 
 at first, and was then ridiculed because it was found 
 to be a forgery, just as the public, in the fierceness 
 of its condemnation of Chatterton as a forger, 
 quite forgot the real merit which was in his 
 poemSi 
 
 [ 107 ] 
 
io8 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 For that there was a certain degree of truth, 
 or enough to authorize reflection and research 
 into the Hermippus theory, suggested itself to 
 many. Without having resource to Magnetism 
 or Mesmerism to explain it, the world has, we may 
 say, long known by experience that man and 
 woman mutually derive from one another health, 
 not by any means solely from such gratification 
 of sexual desire as health and Nature exact, but 
 by a mysterious mutual mingling of bodily in- 
 fluence, which will be explained by biology and 
 physiology in due time. Married couples are 
 generally supposed to live longer than celibates 
 owing to this giving and taking vitality ; for as 
 the witch was believed to give forth or spread an 
 aura or supernaturally evil radiation of air, so per 
 contra the blooming salu britor, or sanitarian, with 
 his (or her) bracing and invigorating power, has 
 ever been thought to benefit all about him. And 
 since it was beyond all question true that colds, 
 consumption, and diseases beyond number were 
 communicated, it seemed but fair that Nature 
 should as a balance admit a contagion of health, 
 on the principle that it is a very poor rule which 
 will not work both ways. 
 
 I firmly believe that there is such a tonic or 
 salutary effect with a purely physical basis or 
 influence of sex on sex, since every physician 
 knows of cases of anaemic, green, sickly, pining 
 girls, and of young men who seem to be mysteri- 
 ously miserable, who bloom into health when 
 
OF MUTUAL INFLUENCE 109 
 
 ' married,' and of whom frank friends say with a 
 smile, ' All that she wants is a man,' or of the 
 other,' a fille.^ 
 
 But apart from sexual need there is something 
 in the moral, intellectual, or social influence of 
 man on woman and of woman on man which has 
 been more or less commented on by a grand army 
 of writers, from Moses, who represents the Lord 
 as having just expressed the opinion, down to 
 Thackeray , who declares that the stupidest or most 
 foolish damsel is far better company for a young 
 man than none. Unto which it may be added 
 that the lady has just as much need of congenial 
 male society, only let it be observed that the 
 alternative for either supposes a good and fit 
 companion — not a fool. So there is a pleasant 
 and once common French picture entitled 
 Comme VEsprit vient aux Filles — how girls got 
 their wit, or Wisdom, which represented a 
 Bon Gaultier telling merry tales to laughing 
 damsels. 
 
 Now, without having recourse to teleology or 
 Providential Intention, I would assert that, from 
 this point of view, it is a sa lucky thing for every 
 man to have, like a lobster, a lady in his head, as 
 for every feminine to have a man, since it is by 
 no means sure that it is not a part of the great 
 law which makes polarism, antithesis, and sensivity 
 the rule of life and progressive intellect. In very 
 truth I wonder sometimes whether this be not the 
 true Adam and Eve, and if the Devil did not keep 
 
no THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 faith with the Lady by giving her all the stores of 
 good and of evil, and of supernatural wisdom — eritis 
 sicut Deus — and then came Deus and shut her up 
 in Adam's brain, or Adam in her brain, and so 
 conditioned her and him that from that time they 
 met no more, or, if they did, it was only at long 
 intervals, as the Gipsies say that the Man in the 
 Moon mee1:s his sister the Sun once a month to 
 borrow light. Which accounts for several things 
 — among others the appearance at that time of so 
 many magazines, ranging from penny dips up to 
 electrics ! 
 
 Unfortunately Man has not known of this Lady 
 in his brain, and when he met her now and then 
 and learned from or profited by her, he thought 
 like Zoroaster it was ' His own shadow walking 
 in the garden ' — truly a shadow informed with a 
 certain intellect, like that in Chamisso's tale, 
 which so sadly wailed out a scriptural text. But, 
 after all, he never dreamed that it was anything 
 but Himself. And he profited greatly by her 
 influence, and might have profited far more had 
 he known the truth and kept company with her 
 and been her young man, as so many poets have 
 to a degree succeeded in doing. 
 
 In earlier life, or even in a riper age, full faith 
 and long-continued determined thought as Will, 
 exercised with Forethought — that is to say, fully 
 matured understanding or comprehension of what 
 we really mean, supported by Perseverance, can 
 work what we call Miracles. Unto this I have de- 
 
OF MUTUAL INFLUENCE in 
 
 voted a bookwhich explains the process in detail.* 
 Of which book I, somewhat unwillingly, and after 
 due reflection, and as a duty, will tell something 
 which is absolutely true, and in no degree romanced 
 or involuntarily exaggerated. After I had pub- 
 lished it, I took to reading it over six or seven times 
 with great attention, as I had never done before 
 with any of my own works. And every time I 
 learned something, and was often astonished at 
 it, as if it had been a book by some olher person, 
 and that without vanity or egoism. So I became 
 a Mentor unto myself, till I began to believe that 
 /, the real Self, had not written it at all, though 
 I had certainly given it form. This led me to 
 reflect on the Subliminal Self, and the Inner Me, 
 and the Unconscious Cerebration and Astral 
 Incorporation on which so many Theosophic and 
 other works have been written, all of which I 
 found absolutely unsatisfactory because none of 
 them actually conformed to Science and strict 
 Materialism, all being in fact founded on old 
 Superstition, Tradition, and Spiritualism. Then 
 it struck me that this Inner Self, which showed a 
 separate power or creative ability in Dreams, was 
 the result of the bodily remnant in us of the other 
 sex — working in darkness, and yet strangely 
 working in its way — and the result was this 
 book., 
 
 * * Have You a Strong Will ? Or, How to Develop Will 
 Power or any other Faculty, etc., and render it habitual, etc.* 
 By Charles Godfrey Leland. London : Philip Wellby. 
 
112 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 I think that if the reader will reflect on it, and 
 study the characters of his or her friends, he or 
 she will find much therein to confirm the theory. 
 As I write there occurs to me a young lady who 
 inhabits a palazzo in Rome, and lives in the beau 
 monde, the joy of whose heart is to buy and sell 
 horses, and drive long bargains day after day with 
 a dozen maquignons, in which bargains she often 
 gets the better of them, and who is acquainted 
 with or has met I know not how many brigands, 
 settimani or wizards, gypsies, and the like, and it 
 would be a hard task to convince me that she has 
 not the Gentleman within her brain to a very 
 appreciable degree, though she be feminine and 
 lady-like without, as much as heart could desire. 
 
 Again, I recall a man, now passed away, whose 
 name is known to all my readers, whose bravery 
 was remarkable as his iAimense learning. There 
 was always something in his voice, his smile, in 
 the gentle folding of his hands, which struck me 
 as very feminine. He was a stupendous linguist — 
 a foreign tongue seemed to come to him as if by 
 inspiration ; in this respect I never met his equal, 
 and yet at several Oriental Congresses I have met 
 with men who were therein Masters. What was 
 remarkable in this was that he made no use what- 
 ever of dictionaries or grammars, though he wrote 
 the latter. He had no patience with them. He 
 merely listened to a foreigner for a few days, took 
 in every word with a feminine quick perception 
 of its meaning, and forgot nothing. In a few days 
 
OF MUTUAL INFLUENCE 113 
 
 he would be talking it, as it seemed, like a native. 
 I can only explain this by the theory that in him 
 the female element in his brain quickly recorded 
 in his memory every word, and gave it out again 
 with special promptitude. Women are often 
 wonderful linguists without much study. I knew 
 one who spoke sixteen languages fluently, and 
 had never, I think, used a book for one, except 
 that she spoke of having consulted Catafago's 
 Dictionary for Arabic words. She was remark- 
 able in being intellectually almost deficient in 
 most respects, though she was quick at catching 
 ordinary meanings and ideas. In her the male 
 element probably functioned as the female did in 
 the other case. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL AND THE MIND 
 WITHIN IN RELATION TO THE INNER SEX 
 
 As I have written in the foregoing, the soul is as 
 material as the body, and it is from its materiality, 
 as well as other properties in common with 
 created or evolved organisms, that I infer its 
 immortality. For that matter exists we know, 
 and that it is from its very nature indestructible, 
 but of Spirit we know nothing beyond what is 
 told by Tradition or ' They say so,^ 
 
 We find in every being certain functions or organs 
 which, when they have fulfilled their appointed 
 tasks in life, disappear in death, and then, as 
 elements or matter in some more or less subtle 
 form, enter into new combinations. 
 
 But every one of these functions or faculties 
 has been in its way and time developed and 
 carried to its aim and end. We have smelt, tasted 
 and felt, seen and heard, while we used the body. 
 Moreover, we have developed and used our mental 
 qualities to a more or less satisfactory degree. 
 All save one, and that the most important of all, 
 if we may judge by the attention which Moses 
 [114] 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 115 
 
 has paid to it, the Hves which have been devoted to 
 it, and the money spent thereon, which has been 
 about equal to that devoted to war. This is the 
 Soul whose Immortality forms the real basis of 
 every religion. During life with the vast majority 
 or totality of mankind, its training, or care, or 
 preparation for the Future is, as we are told 
 by the Wisdom of all the Ages and of all the 
 World, the thing of all others to be studied, 
 even in preference to every other earthly blessing 
 or benefit. As a fact, in social and mental evo- 
 lution it has attracted more serious and enthusi- 
 astic work than any other. 
 
 The Soul is the highest mental power, that which 
 governs the rest, and which has thus far defied 
 detection. Carpenter, who analyzed or ascer- 
 tained with tolerable accuracy the workings of 
 all the other functions of the brain, could not find 
 the Master, who, however, clearly exists. There 
 are some who find in him the coefficient or joint 
 result of the other forces ; this does not destroy 
 the theory of his existence as an independent 
 being. The Bees form their monstrous Queen by 
 contribution ; the Queen Bee of the Soul is formed 
 in like manner. 
 
 But what would be a monstrous contradiction 
 to all known Law would be that an Existence — 
 the very master of mental power — which had by 
 the concurrence of innumerable ideas and social 
 impulses been prepared and trained to a faith in 
 Immortality, devoting to it powers which would 
 
 8—2 
 
ii6 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 be merely wasted if it had no future, should be 
 the one only mental power which does not achieve its 
 end ! It would be like a drama or romance with 
 its last act or chapter gone ; in fact, most of the 
 intellectual work in a life devoted to no real end 
 whatever. Truly, it is from this point of view 
 that many enemies of the Church have regarded 
 religion — that is, as an empty cheat whereon man- 
 kind have wasted their millions to support knaves ; 
 but the real motive lay deeper than they wotted 
 of. There is in man a result of mentality which 
 survives the rest, and passes to new form among 
 the Existences which are not perceptible to our 
 senses. 
 
 A marvellous confirmation of this is in the fact 
 that so many people when very near death see or 
 perceive, all at once, and altogether, as it were, 
 condensed, every event or incident of their past 
 lives. Now, with many of these cases the testi- 
 mony has been feeble, but I have had within my 
 own experience one which was all-sufficient to 
 settle the fact. I had a brother named Henry 
 Perry Leland, a man of marked integrity and 
 talent. He had studied Art in Rome, spoke several 
 languages, and written several books. He eventu- 
 ally died of the result of a wound received during 
 the Civil War. It happened once that while bath- 
 ing in the surf at Cape May, New Jersey, he was 
 carried by the tide out to sea, and for half an hour 
 or more swam for his life, with almost no hope. 
 Finally, after having been washed a mile below 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 117 
 
 the point whence he started, a chance wave took 
 him in and landed him on the very point of the 
 Cape by a most marvellous chance. Unto him, 
 in what appeared to be the most critical moment, 
 when life was trembling in the balance, came in 
 an instant a complete memory of everything in 
 his past life — all in one. I, being occupied with 
 reading such subjects, and having a fairly large 
 collection of German and other metaphysics and 
 occulta, questioned him with care, the result being 
 my full conviction that this concentration of ex- 
 perience is a fact. 
 
 I had also known at Weinsberg in my youth 
 Dr. Justinus Kerner, who from similar experi- 
 ences formed the belief that the disembodied soul 
 ever bore with it as a kind of record or tablet all 
 the experiences of its bygone life — that is, in a 
 monogram. We may understand that, while the 
 soul does not carry with it all the millions of 
 Images in the Memory Cells, it may still have 
 photographed in itself and condensed all that 
 Memory ever received. And to what end or aim 
 can this condensation of all Experience be made 
 in man if it be not to carry into a future life ? 
 Nature makes nothing in vain. Or why is the 
 Soul perfected by the belief in Immortality, and 
 matured into a being or mentality far beyond all 
 other powers, if it is never to exercise in full 
 those powers which it has barely awakened here 
 below ? It is the one factor which has never 
 worked itself out while in life, therefore in death 
 
ii8 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 it is ascenstonem expedans — ' awaiting its 
 destiny.' 
 
 The soul is a force resulting probably from 
 sensivity in combination with other forces : it 
 may have originated with us ; in any case, as a 
 force it cannot die. The electricity or sensivity, 
 whatever there is of impulse or power in us, does 
 not perish, but passes away into matter, there to 
 inspire new lives ; the soul-force doubtless seeks 
 and finds among elements, to us unknown, another 
 shape with other senses, living, perhaps, in other 
 dimensions. But that the soul has been ere its 
 departure developed into a separate and original 
 force with peculiar functions I believe, as I do that 
 every force, once created, goes on for ever, sustain- 
 ing and sustained by all the other constituents of 
 Nature. 
 
 It would seem probable that the female mind 
 in man, or the masculine in woman, having the 
 full run of the memory, is the subordinate to 
 whom is assigned the charge of ' all our life in a 
 nutshell.' For as she or he has had something 
 of the same kind in care from the beginning, this 
 has unto it marvellous affinity, being, in fact, the 
 same task, only perfected. 
 
 Analogies and coincidences are not final proofs, 
 but they deserve to be treated with more respect 
 than they generally receive, because there was a 
 time when the greatest truths or facts now recog- 
 nised by Science and all the world had no better 
 support. This must be, perhaps ought to be, the 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 119 
 
 case for a long time. Who would say with 
 Milton ? 
 
 * Let my lamp at midnight hour 
 Be seen in some high lonely tower, 
 Where I may oft out-watch the Bear, 
 With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere 
 The spirit of Plato, to unfold 
 What worlds or what vast regions hold 
 The immortal Mind, that hath forsook 
 Her mansion in this fleshly nook.' 
 
 The Tower in this exquisite passage is generally 
 known to have been that of Galileo, on a hill which 
 is in sight from where I write here in Florence. 
 
 It seems to me as if our inner self, who can think 
 in dreams, and act and make ingenious novels in 
 them, and sometimes even in our reveries, and 
 who has full charge of the memory, must have 
 some knowledge as to the future and the immor- 
 tality of the soul. Nor does She seem to be one 
 who is to die with the body. She has passed all If 
 her life like a neglected prisoner, undeveloped, A 
 awaiting the opening of the doors to Immortality 
 — is she not of the soul and sharing its destiny ? 
 
 And we may well believe that if we are to have, 
 while in this hfe, better knowledge of that which, 
 is to be, we shall obtain it when we become more 
 intimate with the soul within, and by its aid. 
 
 We grant that Electricity, Gravity, Ether, and / 
 other Forces live on for ever, and we may also 
 admit that Sensivity, which is developed from 
 polarism and the conditions of Katabolism and 
 Anabolism to attraction and repulsion, emotion or 
 
I20 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 feeling, rises to instinct and intellect. Certain it 
 is that it is a developed and continued Force, just 
 as much so as any other. Now, what ground have 
 we for believing that this one force of all others 
 comes to an end and dies, especially since it is 
 evidently the most variable and progressive ? 
 Sensivity in its highest form is not a part of Intel- 
 lect, it is the very Mind itself, the highest force in 
 the brain, where it prepares unto itself a new form 
 or body against death. It has tended to a Unit 
 of Existence ever since it has been in the Body ; 
 it was prepared for it in lower organisms, and will 
 rise from it to higher. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured in the foregoing pages to 
 show, or rather investigate, the truth of the 
 theory that there is in us all, in our mutual system, 
 an Alternate Sex corresponding to the degree of 
 male or female existent in our bodies. With this 
 I have set forth the idea that this Inner Self has 
 access to all the hidden stores of Memory, and 
 appears to be the predominant factor in Dreams, 
 and the purveyor of material and a coefficient 
 power in all work of the Imagination, as well as 
 the mysterious and occult capacities which seem 
 to be in reserve for future evolutions. 
 
 I have also explained that in states of semi- 
 slumber, as in the reverie or brown study, or 
 whenever our conscious waking judgment partly 
 reposes, the Inner Self steals forth, and combines 
 images from memory with the aid of judgment, 
 and that all abstraction of the mind to a single 
 subject partakes of this. 
 
 Therefore it is a very important accomplishmeni 
 to be able to enter into harmony with, control oi 
 
 [ 121 ] 
 
122 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 manage, this inner independent function, since the 
 degree to which a man can do so gives him Imagina- 
 tion, or the power to act as poet, artist, inventor, 
 or, in fact, carry out, if not originally conceive, all 
 works of genius. Of which I am thoroughly con- 
 vinced, but beg the reader to observe that I neither 
 guarantee that the process shall be extremely 
 light, short, and easy, or that the success shall be 
 extraordinary, unless there be unusual gifts. All 
 that any man can do by the system is to make the 
 best of what is in him. Which I mention to spare 
 small critics the trouble of declaring that I profess 
 to be able to create Genius to any extent to order. 
 
 This control over, or agreement with, the 
 Imagination is to be obtained, mechanically or 
 corporeally, by simply thinking on a subject, and 
 in a way not very easy to describe, yet which 
 will in all cases come forth or suggest itself to 
 the seeker. But far beyond this, when the practice 
 of reverie or half sleep becomes habitual, is the 
 employment of the two mighty powers Will and 
 Prayer, and yet neither in the vulgar sense in 
 which they are commonly taken. 
 
 Now, whether a sage go mountaineering or 
 valleying in Thought, whether he walk the level 
 plain of Common Sense, or soar to the clouds of 
 Genius, he will find that all mental operations, 
 all Magic, and all that Man has ever dreamed that 
 he could do in occult art, reduces itself to simple 
 supplication to and praise of God, hand in hand 
 with his own developed Will. Herein is included 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 123 
 
 all that the Cabalists ever really achieved, unto 
 which we may add the miracles of all Churches 
 and Faiths, Shamanism, Voodooing, Theosophy, 
 Faith Cures, and Necromancies of all colours and 
 prices, whether warranted to wash or not, cheap 
 or dear. Prayer and Will, Will and Prayer — all 
 beyond mere Experience is embraced in those 
 two wondrous words. 
 
 The quintessence of Christianity, as Christ 
 meant it to be, was Faith, or Will, combined with 
 Worship and Prayer. He meant that Man, free 
 from all aid of Pharisee or priest of any kind, perse, 
 and alone, or absolutely independent of influences, 
 should pray directly to God. This prayer, sup- 
 ported by a pure, moral, altruistic life, was the 
 beginning and the end of His teaching, and forms 
 consistently the complete whole of His system, 
 whatever may have been foisted in, of which 
 there was abundance, by the good folk who stop 
 at no fraud if the intent be pious, and who, to 
 enforce a dogma, will not merely forge a text 
 repudiated by the greatest scholars, but continue 
 it to the present day in all copies of the Bible ! 
 
 Christ established the theology of a stupendous 
 equality of Mankind before God, such as never 
 occurred on earth before, when He taught that 
 every human being, from the humblest slave up 
 to Caesar, should pray directly to the Deity, and 
 ask that a realm of equality in justice and holi- 
 ness should prevail here on earth. For, assuredly, 
 to pray that God's Will should be done on earth 
 
124 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 as it is done in heaven was asking for a very 
 different state of affairs from what prevailed in 
 Rome, or has been found there or at any court 
 since. And the Apostles themselves, and after 
 them the manufacturers of every sect or heresy, 
 with the Roman Church at their head, and the 
 Greek and Coptic and Protestant following after, 
 one and all did their wretched best to work religion 
 for man in direct contradiction to Christ's great 
 idea that the worshipper should be his own only 
 priest and church, without any intercessors or 
 saints, or any agents whatever. In the manu- 
 facture of these, by agents to orate pro nobis, there 
 went a degree of invention which would have in 
 its time produced steam-engines, X rays, and 
 flying-machines, if I may believe sundry Lives of 
 the Saints which I have bought from time to time 
 from wheelbarrows and colporteurs, the which 
 works are as crammed with gross and palpable 
 lies, and coarse folly and false and foolish 
 miracles, as the ' Adventures of Baron Mun- 
 chausen ' or of ' Peter Wilkins,' albeit the Legends 
 lack the humour and common-sense of the latter 
 works. 
 
 Now, Prayer presupposes a God, and as I have in 
 this work avowed my belief that all which exists 
 is one material substance or Matter, and as this is 
 invariably assumed to be Atheism, and a denial 
 of all that is divine, I may awaken some opinion 
 of being absurd or paradoxical when I declare 
 that, utterly denying all mere Tradition as a basis 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 125 
 
 for Faith, the only grounds for actual behef m 
 God are to be sought in Science, and, indeed, 
 chiefly in what Science has done of late years. 
 Now, I will not say that the existence of God, such 
 as Man generally imagines Him to be, is perfectly 
 and clearly proved. Perhaps it never will be so 
 long as the Ideal of Him progresses. Whenever 
 in the Past, at any time, men believed they had 
 attained to absolute proof of His existence, and 
 perfected Him as a Monotheistic Jehovah or 
 Brahma, then there set in after a time such a fixed 
 creed or such a Conservatism as was incompatible 
 with Social Evolution. For whenever humanity 
 believes too much, it becomes too superstitious and 
 slavish, while, on the contrary, when it is sure of 
 nothing, Anarchy sets in. 
 
 It is beginning to be a very general opinion that 
 Matter is infinitely more subtle than it was con- 
 ceived to be of old, also that there are Forces so 
 hidden as to be unknown to us. As Aristotle 
 believed there were only four elements, whereas 
 we believe in nearly a hundred, and that all of 
 these are probably but one, so Analysis is pro- 
 gressing to the idea of as yet undiscovered Laws. 
 When it is considered that Matter in this world 
 assumes millions of forms, and in a planet larger 
 or smaller, probably or certainly, millions of others, 
 we conclude there is no limit to the evolving 
 force in Nature or its results. 
 
 As many of the elements and, to a degree, the 
 real Forces were unknown to Man or imperceptible 
 
126 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 to his Senses until the latter were aided by inven- 
 tions and experiment, so it follows that there may 
 be still subtler forms awaiting discovery. More 
 than this, there seems to be proof that there are 
 senses as yet unknown to Man in certain organ- 
 isms, or that he has in himself senses and capa- 
 cities which will be evolved in the Future. All of 
 which admits the possibility of forms of matter, 
 beings, or Intelligences, not now perceptible to 
 our senses (which were simply created for a 
 certain routine), yet which really exist. Modern 
 Science is every day opening some new door 
 through which comes light on this subject. 
 
 Admitting subtle and higher Intelligences, 
 which is no more than admitting that there are 
 on earth degrees in human beings, we come pro- 
 gressively to God : it may be in a series of beings ; 
 thereof we know nothing, and it is no more neces- 
 sary that we should try to understand what is 
 probably far beyond our best Intelligence than 
 that a babe of a month should have the Integral 
 Calculus explained to it. 
 
 For since no man who ever lived could ever yet 
 fundamentally explain the simplest problem in 
 Nature, it may well be doubted whether his mind 
 could rise to or grasp the clearest explication of 
 God, or the problems and paradoxes of Creation — 
 albeit we are all crazy for the revelation, though 
 we know it would wreck our small understandings 
 — ^wherein we are marvellously like many women, 
 who, being quite sure that some secret is really 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 127 
 
 none of their business, would ' harrow hell and rake 
 out the devil ' — yea, and become his prey — to find 
 it out. Yet this we may understand, and it is 
 better worth studying than all the ' metaphysic ' 
 ever invented, that Matter and Force are infinite 
 in forms beyond our sense perception, and that 
 in their extent they can hardly fail to include 
 stupendous Intelligences, inasmuch as Evolution 
 includes stupendous Ingenuity, which implies such 
 Existence. 
 
 Nor is it very logical or consistent with all which 
 we see in Nature to believe that there is an as- 
 cending series of intelligences from the lowest 
 organism up to Man, where mentality ceases, while 
 beyond him are innumerable marvellous creations 
 ever evolving. According to Fichte, God reaches 
 His highest development in Man, which is truly a 
 very narrow-minded and ignorant idea, consider- 
 ing that Man does not understand the simplest of 
 God's works. But to Fichte, as to all of the old 
 schools, man's senses formed the limit of creation, 
 and it never occurred to transcendentalists that 
 despised Matter might contain existences very 
 far beyond human beings — more refined, subtle, 
 and intellectual. And if this be not as yet fully 
 proved, one thing is at least certain, that it is far 
 better supported by Science and rendered far 
 more probable than was ever yet anything backed 
 by ' Spiritualism.' 
 
 Nearly all of this is ' mere hypothesis,' but it 
 agrees with what we know to be true, and is in 
 
128 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 accordatxce with the ' trend ' of modern science. 
 What supports it is the consideration as tov/hether 
 the infinite action of Forces in Nature on Matter 
 is blind chance evolving without Thought or 
 Intellect, or whether there be a guiding mind — 
 of course like our own — that has been the first 
 condition in all religions from the beginning ! 
 
 Now, when we consider and realize (even when 
 aided by Von Hartmann's ' Philosophy of the 
 Unconscious ') that the cleverest among us have 
 no idea to what degree Phidias, when he cut his 
 marble, or Shakespeare, when he wrote his plays, 
 was, after all, only carrying out and onwards 
 inherited Instinct and transmitted tradition and 
 habit, we should m modesty admit that we are 
 none of us quite so mdependent or original as we 
 all believe ourselves to be. I can well suppose 
 that a bird, carolling in the sunlight on a bough, 
 has some dim perception that nothing can be 
 happier or know more than it does. That there 
 are marvellous degrees in human Intelligence, and 
 that a Papuan is just one grade above an ape, is 
 not reflected on. As before said, the very highest 
 human genius has not arrived at the complete 
 solution of the very simplest problems in Nature. 
 This is shown in the study of Embryology, once 
 considered so simple, but in which, as we proceed, 
 with every new advance ten deeper problems 
 reveal themselves. If the very transcendentalism 
 of ingenious adaptiveness and of creation is a 
 proof of intellect, then blind Chance in Evolution 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 129 
 
 is of its kind a Mind, since it embraces our minds, 
 and who can say what higher hidden forms of 
 Intellect — yea, a God ? For He is Evolution 
 embracing all things, especially Himself, the self- 
 evolved, ever working in mysterious ways His 
 wonders to perform — the Maker and the Made. 
 
 Now, that everything is not perfect in this world, 
 according to our ideas, is palpable enough, but to 
 conclude from this that there is no God at all, 
 and that our imperfectly-developed minds have 
 grasped the idea of Evolution as it ought to be or 
 is, is illogical. 
 
 What further confirms this is the truth that all 
 who lead good lives, according to their lights, 
 doing their duty for its owii sake, and all that is 
 good because it is good, ever praying unto and 
 praising God, are the best among men, and ever 
 getting their reward the less they care for it. Be 
 it delusion or not, he who lives in faith in God 
 with all his Will, absolutely given and determined 
 to walk in His holy Way according to His holy 
 Will, with perfect humility and devotion and proper 
 wisdom, that man is among men the happiest. 
 Whether Evolution be blindly called blind chance, 
 or if it be so, or all be managed by a Providence, 
 Faith in God is the best guide for Man. And 
 whether creation and the world be full of suffering, 
 or errors, or not, the devout man is blessed by 
 God, and by prayer he can rise so far as he needs 
 to go. 
 
 Unto this conclusion I have been led by perfect, 
 
 9 
 
I30 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 unflinching, consistent Materialism, or by a faith 
 that Matter is all in all, and therp is no such thing 
 as Spirit of any kind. And nt appears to me, 
 moreover, that it is only on this ground that we 
 can arrive at anything at all like certainty that 
 there is a God or higher Intelligences than ours, or 
 a future, but that every step of modem Science 
 is leading to this result. Now, according to the 
 old system it was a very easy matter indeed to 
 make your proof as firm and perfect as you pleased 
 by first begging the question — that is, by assuming 
 that a God made quite on your own lines existed, 
 and then making or assuming traditions to support 
 your fancies. The proof of the existence of God 
 is in proportion to the wisdom of the recipient, and 
 all that we can expect is to rise in faith for ever, 
 yet ever gaining fresh proof. 
 
 It was inordinately arrogant of the Mystics, of 
 whom Peiresc has in a book described about five 
 hundred kinds, to aim at a union of the soul with 
 God, and actual Identity with Him, which idea pre- 
 vailed among innumerable Persians and Indians, 
 or, I may say, still prevails. They prayed, or 
 abstracted, or opiumed, or hasheeshed, or shouted 
 themselves in camp meetings as Methodists or 
 Convulsionnaires, into fits or syncopes, and 
 believed that they were all inspired, when they 
 were in a way only drunk. There is no such 
 union with God or the Power above us. All that 
 the purest and holiest should hope for is to be his 
 humblest servant serving Him in truth. That is 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 131 
 
 better than all that the most ambitious mortal can 
 conceive. Simple prayer, of which the Lord's is 
 the ideal, and sincere praise is worth it all. He 
 who does this sincerely, and who lives in it, and 
 has daily recourse to it, will attain to absolute 
 peace, and find that it is not only a protection 
 from all troubles, but that God, who knows our 
 thoughts and needs better than we do, will take 
 every care of us. 
 
 It is all very simple, but there is no wisdom 
 beyond it ; it is worth all the volumes of theo- 
 logy ever written. Pray in sincerity to be made 
 good and wise, and do your best according to 
 your lights to carry it out in life, and wisdom and 
 purity will not be denied you. Add to this, earnest 
 development of your Will little by little, ever con- 
 tinued, and you will attain to wondrous power, 
 even to what is called miracle. 
 
 It is well to add to this that a contented mind 
 is a great aid to such elevation. Few indeed are 
 those on earth who realize the blessings which 
 they enjoy or should enjoy did they really think 
 of them. But they become accustomed to them, 
 and take them as a matter of course or as a due, 
 giving most of their thoughts to Something More, 
 and ever more again, till all life is full of dis- 
 content. Now, with every prayer, and every day, 
 every soul should earnestly reflect on what he or 
 she has that is good in life and enjoyable in all its 
 fulness, and thank God for it. Doing this we 
 shall soon note that new and special blessings 
 
 9—2 
 
132 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 begin to come, and truly it is marvellous how 
 often they come when we once begin to be grate- 
 ful for them in prayer. For the sincerely thankful 
 are ever blessed, A deep conviction or firm belief 
 in all this will bring a degree of content and happi- 
 ness over all our life which no pen can depict, 
 ' since gratitude brings luck.' 
 
 In such a disposition we can enter into and 
 understand the hidden mind within us, and bring 
 it into sympathy with our Waking Reason or Com- 
 mon Sense with great ease. It is a being who has 
 been as a neglected child since birth, without 
 religion or moral sense, an elf of caprices, a wild 
 fairy, but approach it with prayer and Will, and 
 in time it will be a gentle, sensible friend. 
 
 Now, there are myriad and million — many who, 
 if they had read or heard all that I have here 
 written, would sincerely say, 'But what is the prac- 
 tical use or sense of it all, and how is a man any 
 the better off for knowing that his mind is male 
 and female, or that there is another way to prove 
 the existence of God than that of dogmatic 
 assertion ?' The practical use, friend, is that an 
 active mind trained to thinks even on such imprac- 
 tical topics as you deem these to be, is every day 
 rising in social value above you and your kind, 
 and reducing you to the ranks with great rapidity. 
 I do not say that it is by study of this special 
 subject that one will become your better, but that 
 the consideration of all or any kind of human 
 conditions in relation to science, is sure to result 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF GOD 133 
 
 in valuable culture. And this is a truth by far 
 too little considered of many books, which even 
 if we disagree with them still have to a great 
 degree (perhaps more than better ones) the gift 
 of inducing the reader to think. 
 
 Let him who would be happy lead a blameless, 
 or rather a genially and truly good, life, completely 
 inspired with sincere prayer, and let him who would 
 be wise and brave and fearless of all save God, 
 cultivate his Will till there is in him the self- 
 reliance which defies all that there is of earth 
 earthly, of sin sinful, all folly and vanity, despair, 
 irresolution, and timidity. And if Prayer be as 
 it were of Woman, and Will the special power of 
 Man, let us not forget that the perfection of both 
 will be found in their being One, whereunto 
 Prayer and Will, or Will-and-Prayer, in the same 
 meaning will inspire both. 
 
 It is a great gain for any man when at any time 
 (although the younger the better) he realizes in 
 fulness the value of Thought as a habit in itself. 
 To which many will reply that it depends on what 
 he thinks about, which is all very well, as far as it 
 goes, but it is only a poor half-truth. For the 
 great question is : ^ Is he a thinker at all ?^ For 
 if he be that, in very earnestness and truth, he 
 will come right in the end, just as a very great 
 and powerful stream washes itself clean from 
 all impurity. No work is of any real value which 
 does not make us think, though it be written in 
 the most correct and elegant manner, while the 
 
134 THE ALTERNATE SEX 
 
 writing which awakens us to action of any kind, 
 and, instead of weakly criticising books and things, 
 teaches us to create, act, and reflect, is to be 
 esteemed above rubies. Yes, though it be brist- 
 ling with defects and typographical errors, and all 
 the sins against the Holy Ghost of Rhetoric (the 
 detection of which forms the capital of so many 
 of the critics who are the Detectives of Literature), 
 it is to be prized, for it achieves that which ought 
 to be regarded as the chief aim of life. 
 
 And now. Reader, if this book of mine has made 
 you think or reflect, or in any way whatever in- 
 spired you to read further in better works, and 
 learn more or act, I shall have accomplished to 
 perfection all that heart could desire, whether 
 you agree with what is here advanced or not. For 
 it is not to ' suit the views ' of my readers that I 
 write, nor even to make views, but to induce them 
 to create views of their own, which is as the 
 training of of&cers compared to the drilling of 
 privates. 
 
 THE END 
 

BIOPHILE CLL 
 LlBRAm 
 
 Vi^