“Have you studied physiology?”
“Yes’m.”
“Was it the physiology of man or woman?”
“Why, it didn’t say anything but physiology.”
“You studied, then, only those organs in which men and women are alike, as in their muscular and nervous systems, and in the organs of digestion; in fact you learned only of the organs which are for the preservation of the individual. You learned nothing of them in regard to sex, which is termed special physiology.”
A wave of color was creeping over Carl’s face, seeing which the Doctor said:
“As you have never studied this special physiology supposing you try to forget that any one has ever told you anything about it, and let us for a few minutes talk of it as of God’s laws. We believe God to be pure, and we cannot believe that he would make a law that was founded on impurity. It is true we are able to think of his laws in an impure way, but that is our fault, not his. Let us now try to think his pure thoughts after him. If there are two sexes created by the Almighty he must have a pure purpose in creating them. We 9 seldom think how much of beauty and melody and loveliness is due to sex.
“It is because of sex that we are gathered in families and enjoy all the delights of home. It is because of sex that we have ties of kindred, brothers, sisters, father, mother, uncles, aunts and cousins. Think of the pleasant home gatherings at Christmas or Thanksgiving, or upon family birthdays, with all the relatives, old and young, meeting in love and sympathy; think of the sweet prattle of children in the home; think of the tender ministrations of mother or sister in times of sorrow or illness or death, and remember that these are possible because of sex. Men may build themselves fine club houses where they congregate to smoke or drink or eat together, but these are not homes. Women may go away by themselves into a convent and give up the world, but in so doing they give up the home; for in a real true home there must be parents and children, and this comes through sex. We may go even farther and say with Mr. Grant Allen that everything high and ennobling in our nature springs directly from the fact of sex. He claims that to it ‘we owe our love of color, of graceful forms, of melodious sound, of rhythmical motion, the evolution of music, of poetry, of romance, of painting, of sculpture, of decorative art, of dramatic entertainment. From it,’ he says, ‘springs the love of beauty, around it all beautiful arts circle as their centre. Its subtle aroma pervades all literature, and to it we owe the heart and all that is best within it.’
“We read of knights of old fighting for ‘fayre ladye,’ of heroes who died to save wives and children; 10 we cannot take up a book of poetry without realizing how love of men and women has been the inspiration of the poet in all ages. And this is not all that we owe to sex. In all organic life we find the same force at work. The song of the nightingale is a call to his mate, the chirp of cricket, the song of the thrush, the note of the grasshopper, every charming voice in wild nature are notes of love, and were it not for these, field and forest would be silent. Among the animals we can trace the beauty of form and of covering to the same source. And even in the inanimate world of plants and trees we find sex as the source of life and beauty. The bright tinted flowers are the homes of the father and mother and babies of the plant and without the male and female principle in plants there would be no bud or blossom and no fruit. Remember when you see the beauty of the apple orchard in the spring and the glowing fruit in the autumn that these are the expression of sex-life in the tree.”
“My!” exclaimed Carl, “I never thought of all that before.”