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Elsewhere I have very fully alluded to the prevailing sentiment among the ancients, that the Supreme Deity was bisexual, or hermaphrodite, including in the essence of his being the male and female principles, the generative and prolific powers of nature.
It certainly at first appears a highly remarkable fact that the same female butterfly should have the power of producing at the same time three distinct female forms and a male; and that an hermaphrodite plant should produce from the same seed-capsule three distinct hermaphrodite forms, bearing three different kinds of females and three or even six different kinds of males.
Coming round Santa Buenaventura, and nearing the anchorage, we saw two vessels in port, a large full-rigged, and a small, hermaphrodite brig.
They may dig up a petrified dude and figure out that we were a species of anthropoid ape learnedly proclaim us as "the missing link!" Suppose that by some mischance a picture of the new woman in bloomers and bestride a bike should be preserved: Would posterity accept her as its progenitor, or class her as a lusus naturae perchance an hermaphrodite?
"I vow to man," sais I, "as I am a livin' sinner, that is neither a ship, nor a brigantine, nor a hermaphrodite, but a topsail schooner, that's a fact. What in natur' is the meanin' of all this? Perhaps the captain knows," so I called him again. "Cutler, that vessel is transmografied again," sais I; "look at her." "Pooh," said he, "that's not the same vessel at all.
The trouble is that the Uffizi is so vast, and the Renaissance seems to be so eminently the only proper study of mankind when one is here, that to attune oneself to the enjoyment of antique sculpture needs a special effort which not all are ready to make. In the centre of the next room is the punctual Hermaphrodite without which no large Continental gallery is complete.
To the question of Nano, as to whether he likes remaining a hermaphrodite in order to 'vary the delight of each sex, Androgyno replies: Alas, those pleasures be stale and forsaken; No 't is your fool wherewith I am so taken, The only one creature that I can called blessed; For all other forms I have proved most distressed. Nano. Spoke true, as thou wert in Pythagoras still.
Advicenne says, that when the menses are spent and the womb cleansed, which is commonly in five or seven days at most, if a man lie with his wife from the first day she is purged to the fifth, she will conceive a male; but from the fifth to the eighth a female; and from the eighth to the twelfth a male again: but after that perhaps neither distinctly, but both in an hermaphrodite.
And if the Matter contain'd in another Ball, is exactly temper'd in its Quantities, and equal in its parts, so as there is no Predominancy, the Seed of the Man by its superior Power will determine this matter for a Boy or a Girl: But if a Man's Seed dispos'd to determine the temperate Seed of a Woman to one of the two Sexes has not a sufficient quantity of Spirits to effect it, and the Seed of the Woman prevails for the contrary Sex, then an Hermaphrodite is form'd, who has relation to one and the other according to the different Endeavours of the animated Seed of the Man or Woman.
Into a very strange beast, by some writers called an ass; By others, a precise, pure, illuminate brother, Of those devour flesh, and sometimes one another; And will drop you forth a libel, or a sanctified lie, Betwixt every spoonful of a Nativity pie. Nano then admonishes Androgyno to quit that profane nation. Androgyno answers that he gladly remains in the shape of a fool and a hermaphrodite.
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