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The love which we experience for one another is nothing but an invisible force impelling us to reunite our two halves in order to re-establish ourselves in our pristine perfection. Those men who result from the divisions of hermaphrodites love women; those women who have a similar origin love men.
There are also flies of very large size, called generally soldier- flies, or dog-flies; these have a hoarse buzz, a very rapid flight, and quite long lives; they last the winter through without food, mostly in sheltered nooks below the roof; the most remarkable fact about these is that they are hermaphrodites.
Of aquatic animals, there are many self-fertilising hermaphrodites; but here currents in the water offer an obvious means for an occasional cross.
My work on the Cirripedia possesses, I think, considerable value, as besides describing several new and remarkable forms, I made out the homologies of the various parts I discovered the cementing apparatus, though I blundered dreadfully about the cement glands and lastly I proved the existence in certain genera of minute males complemental to and parasitic on the hermaphrodites.
These sorts of Hermaphrodites as I have already observ'd, have frequently pass'd for Men, being in reality nothing but Women.
And although this exchange of influence is not kept up by an equality of numeric relations, since not only are the sexes very unequally divided in some kinds of animals, but the male and female elements are even combined in certain types, so that the individuals are uniformly hermaphrodites, yet I firmly believe that this numerical distribution, however unequal it may seem to us, is not without its ordained accuracy and balance.
The Intelligence whose Business it is to compose the little Body of Hermaphrodites, is very much disturb'd to meet with a Matter that is intractable for the regular forming of the Genital Parts. On one side the Matter is moist and loose, on the other close and dry; here 'tis hot and there 'tis cold.
Aphrodite would naturally be chosen for the female side, and the ithyphallic Hermes is appropriate for the male side possibly the Hermes pillar with Aphrodite bust was the earliest form. The representations of Hermaphrodites show a male body with female bust; the name Aphroditos would rather suggest a female body with male additions. Other Greek bisexual figures are forms of Priapos and Eros.
All these were considered as horrid and abominable, and as if nature were straying to strange productions. Above all, the people were particularly shocked at the hermaphrodites, which were ordered to be immediately thrown into the sea, as had been lately done with a production of the same monstrous kind, in the consulate of Caius Claudius and Marcus Livius.
In the case of the Free-Martin cattle, even the female sex-glands are modified toward the male type to such an extent that they were long mistaken for testes. The same applies to some glands found in human "hermaphrodites," as Dr Bell's plates show. On the other hand, the fact that such complete transformations have not so far been observed by no means proves their non-existence.
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