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But ages before Christ the prolific white dove of Syria was worshipped throughout the Orient as the symbol of reproductive Nature: and to this day the Almighty is there believed to manifest himself under this form. In ancient Mesopotamia the divine mother of nature is often represented with this dove as having actually alighted on her shoulder or in her open hand.
Since these earlier days a new departure has been made, until now reproductive processes have been brought to such perfection that there is hardly any texture or color scheme that can not be matched. And, if you will permit me, note the half tones of my own charcoal drawings now on exhibition in the adjoining gallery.
There is no male or female sex in its case it combines both within itself. The reproductive process is even far more simple than the "budding" of plants. You may turn one of these wonderful creatures inside out, and still it goes on the even tenor of its way, in no manner disturbed or affected.
It arouses its effects probably by increasing the amount of reproductive material in the sex glands in a direct chemically stimulating effect upon the germinative cells, and so raising the internal pressure within them, stimulating the involuntary muscles within the walls and the canals of the sex glands, and so, by augmenting the tenseness of the muscles, elevating the total intravisceral pressure, by a direct chemical and indirect nervous effect upon the brain, the muscles, the heart, as well as the other glands of internal secretion stimulating the organism as a whole.
The last organic system differs from the other seven in that the performance of its task is of far less importance to the individual than it is to the race as a whole. It is the reproductive system, with a function that must be always biologically supreme.
Teachers of biology should present, as an economic problem, the facts which will make better breeds of plants and animals by direct application of the biological laws of heredity; but they should present and apply parallel facts to human life in order to influence first of all individual responsibility for ethical control of reproductive activity, and thus indirectly work eugenically for an improved human race.
This is the universal means by which the beginnings of all animal reproductive life takes place. But there is another phase in the sex life of human beings, which is entirely different from that of all other animals, and which must therefore be considered beyond all that needs to be said regarding the act of coitus for reproductive purposes only. This we are now ready to consider and study.
Notice also that these higher muscles and nerves are here entirely subservient to, and exist for, digestion and reproduction. In the turbellaria the reproductive system has reached a very high grade of development. It is a complex and beautifully constructed organ. The digestive system has also vastly improved; it has its own muscular layers, and often some means of grasping food.
To sum up on the origin of our Domestic Races of animals and plants. I believe that the conditions of life, from their action on the reproductive system, are so far of the highest importance as causing variability. I do not believe that variability is an inherent and necessary contingency, under all circumstances, with all organic beings, as some authors have thought.
Hadria pointed out that the Greeks also meant no offence in regarding their respectable women as simple reproductive agents of inferior human quality. "And though our well-brought-up girls shrink from the frank speech, they do not appear to shrink from the ideas of the old Greeks. They don't mind playing the part of cows so long as one doesn't mention it."
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