Healthy gonads also retard senility. Gonads whose interstitial cells have been rehabilitated by the Steinach operation bring a new youth to the organism, mentally and physically.
Other glands, the thymus, pancreas, parathyroid, pineal body also play an important part in shaping the human body and with it the personality. The limits of this book do not allow me, however, to discuss them even superficially.
CHAPTER XXIV
Glandular Personalities
I stated in the preceding chapter that to every degree of glandular development there corresponds a certain set of physical characteristics which, in the love life, may be transformed into fetishes, (beautiful features, laymen call them), which are necessary to arouse sexual desire in one's mate, but which are not necessarily attractive to any one else.
Those physical characteristics are, in turn, the tangible evidence of the presence of certain mental attitudes and predispositions.
Individuals seeking in the love union, not merely a passing gratification of their erotism, but a lifelong arrangement, gratifying both the physical and the mental aspects of the organism, should be trained to recognise the presence or absence of characteristics which would make such an arrangement a lasting pleasure or a lasting torture.
For instance, the woman who falls in love with a man because her fetishism requires a short, round, plump, man, with a good head of hair but hairless limbs, must not expect him to ever grow into a fighter, a good provider or even a companion of placid moods.
A man of that type is capricious, unstable, unresisting, and prefers the gentler arts to any form of competitive struggle.