By some strange quirk of the human mind the error and fallacy have been fixed, even among thinkers, that sex-activity begins and ends with copulation.[V] The charging of the body with the necessary energy is considered a negligible quantity. We have taken out the final part of the act and elevated it to a fetich, in law as well as in sentiment, and consider all other sex activities as of no consequence. Yet the stimuli received through the other senses, causing the libidinous turgescence of the body, are the main part of the sexual chain of activities. The sexual act begins with the amorous caress, be it a caress in thought, look, or touch, as hugging or kissing. For contrectation or tumescence and detumescence represent only one act. One impulse is the sequel of the other. The Sermon on the Mount, preaching, “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew v, 28), is nearer the physiological truth than the common accepted view.
The same disturbances which cause a break in the chain of sexual activity during childhood, puberty and adolescence are also responsible that in civilized men we can hardly speak any longer of an instinct of sex. If the instinct has not been disturbed by the intrusion of the stimuli of the senses and of the imagery before the period of maturity, the instinct of sex should enter into play at the time of puberty. But, as a rule, the stimulation of the erogenous zones is effected already before the time has arrived for the sex-instinct to make its appearance. During this stimulation, which, as we have seen, is already a part of the sex-act, a certain fore-pleasure is experienced. Henceforth the individual is desirous of the repetition of this experience. Especially when the orgasm has once been tasted, the memory of the same causes the individual to look for a repetition of the highest lustful sensation in human experience. Sexual activity is henceforth chiefly desired for the positive lust-feeling connected with it. This means to say that calculation enters into the activity, and with the entrance of calculation the activity ceases to be instinctive. Hence in modern men and women neither sex-activity nor propagation partake of the nature of an instinct. Normal sex-attraction being an offshoot of the reproductive impulse, it is perfectly natural that if the parent impulse loses its instinctive nature, the offspring will also lose it.
[CHAPTER XI]
DEVELOPMENT OF THE REPRODUCTIVE IMPULSE
The instinct of propagation is normally derived from the impulse for the satisfaction of protoplasmatic hunger. In lower animal life the incipient sexual union is effected by two exhausted cells coming together for the mutual exchange of nuclear material. This mode represents the first step in the scale of conjugation.
In the lowest form of unicellular life, as the schizomycetes (yeast) or bacteria, the necessity for conjugation does not appear to exist. In the reproduction of these unicellular organisms the animal simply divides into two, the division of the nucleus, as a rule, preceding that of the cytoplasm by a more or less karyokynetic method.
The ordinary protozoon does not form a composite structure. It divides and multiplies, but the products of the division do not remain together, they leave each other and lead a separate existence. Hence there is no real death in these animals. In the metazoa, or many-celled animals, only the reproductive cells may escape death and continue to live in the offspring. The somatic cells, or the body, die after a longer or shorter period. The unicellular animals do not possess any somatic cells, they are all reproductive cells. Hence we may rightly speak of the “immortality” of the protozoa.
The method of binary fission or splitting, by which the body of the parent becomes divided into two equal parts, into halves, is the simplest method of multiplication. This method is made use of in the amoeba. In this kind of reproduction there is no parent nor child. The children, the new amoebae, are simply the parent cut in two (vide Page 60).
The next simple generation is budding, which is the breaking off of a part smaller than half from a certain individual. The budded-off part has the capacity of growing into a new individual like the parent. This mode of reproduction is found in the hydra.
Another simple mode of generation is that of sporulation. Here the interior of the body of the individual subdivides into more than two parts. Sometimes the parts number many hundreds and are called spores. These three methods are the simplest modes of generation and are exclusively found in the lowest forms of unicellular organisms.