THE MECHANISM OF LOVE
_IV. Hermaphrodism.--Sexual life of
oysters.--Gasteropodes.--The idea of reproduction
and the idea of pleasure.--Mechanism of
reciprocal reproduction: helices.--Spintrian
habits.--Reflections on hermaphrodism._
Fish are the only vertebrates among whom one encounters hermaphrodism,
either accidental: cyprins, herrings, scombers; or regular, sargue,
sparaillon, seran. The myxines, very humble fish living as parasites,
are alternative hermaphrodites, like oysters, like ascides; the genital
gland functions first as testicle, then as ovary. The amphioxus, the
bridge between invertebrates and vertebrates, is not hermaphrodite.
The most strongly marked and most complicated forms of hermaphrodism
are found in mollusks, and chiefly in gasteropodes. The alternate
hermaphrodism of oysters produces effects which have been observed
throughout antiquity. The advice to abstain from oysters during months
lacking an "r" is based on a fact, and that fact sexual. From September
to May, they are males, they are testicles, they elaborate sperm, they
are good; from June to August the ovaries bourgeon, fill with eggs
which turn whitish as they ripen, the oysters are females, they are
bad; fecundation takes place at this time, the spermatozoides, born
in the preceding period, finally perform their office. Superstitions
before being rejected ought to be minutely observed and analysed, there
is nearly always a kernel of truth in the gross envelope.
In the hermaphrodism of echinoderms, of fish, there is never
auto-fecundation; either the sexual products meet outside the animals,
which have neither copulating organs, nor a related genital life; it is
a simple growth of germs; or, in a more complex phase the individuals
have exterior male organs, and female organs, but they can not use them
without the aid of another individual acting either as male, or as
female. Here a new distinction is imposed: either the animal will be
successively male, and then female; or it will be both at once. This
union of the two sexes seems useless, according to human logic, when
the two genital glands ripen at different seasons; one understands it
better when the reciprocal fecundation is simultaneous, since this
doubles the number of females and better assures the conservation of
the specie. One must set aside the idea of pleasure. Apart from the
fact that we can judge it only by a very distant and even dubious
analogy considering the difference between the nervous systems of man
and mollusk, one must set it aside as useless. Pleasure is a result
not an aim. In most animal species coition is but a prelude to death,
and often love and death work their supreme act in the same instant.
Copulation of insects is suicide: would it be reasonable to consider
it as produced by a desire to die? One must dissociate the idea of
pleasure and the idea of love, if one wants to understand anything
of the tragic movements which perpetually beget life at the expense
of life itself. Pleasure explains nothing. People might simply be
commanded to die as a means of reproduction, they would obey with
the same eagerness: this is observed even in humanity. Dithyrambs on
pleasure would be misplaced apropos of the mutual ticklings of two
snails on a vine-leaf; the subject is rather uncomfortable.
Note then two helices, both bisexual, fulfilling exactly the biblical
phrase: "he created them male and female"; their genital organs are
very well developed; the penis and oviduct opening into a vestibule,
which in the act of copulation unbellies itself in part, so that the
penis and vagina come in touch with the orifice; mutual intromission
takes place. A third organ comes from the vestibule, without analogy in
superior animals; it is a little pocket containing a small stiletto,
a jewelled dagger; it is an excitative organ, the needle to prick up
desires. These beasts who have prepared for love by fasting, by long
rubbings, by whole days of close pressure, finally come to a decision,
the swords come out of their scabbards, they conscientiously stab each
other, this causes the penis to rise from its sheath; the double mating
is accomplished.
There are species in which the position of the organs is such that the
same individual can not be at the same time the female of the one for
whom he acts as male, but he can at that moment serve as female to
another male, who is female to a third, and so on. This explains the
garlands of spintrian gasteropodes which one sees realizing innocently
and according to the ineluctable wish of nature, carnal imaginations
that have been the boast of erotic humanity. Facing this light from
animal habits, debauchery loses all character and all its tang, because
it loses all immorality. Man, who unites in himself the aptitudes of
all the animals, all their laborious instincts, all their industries,
could not escape the heritage of their sexual methods; and there is no
lewdness which has not its normal type in nature, somewhere.
Before leaving this repugnant milieu, one may still consider the leech.
Hermaphrodite, they also practice reciprocal fecundation, but the
position of their organs compels them to assume a peculiar position:
the prong emerges from a pore near the mouth; the vagina is above the
anus. The copulation of these wretched animals forms, therefore, a
head-to-tail, the bocal sucker coinciding with the anal sucker.
Animals having both sexes, do not necessarily show sexual dimorphism.
But neither this exact likeness of individuals, nor the double function
with which they are charged, contradicts the general law which seems
to wish that an individual should be due to elements coming from
two different individuals. Autofecundation is exceptional, is very
rare. Whether or no the individual possess the two genital glands,
or one of them only, it needs a male, or an individual acting as
male, and a female or an individual acting as female, to perpetuate
life. Alternative hermaphrodism confirms these propositions, be it
that the same gland transforms itself totally, turn by turn, into
male principle, then into female principle; be it divided between a
male half and a female half, these two halves ripen simultaneously or
successively. When there is total or partial alternation, the male
principle is ready first, and waits: thus the aggressivity of the
male, and the passivity of the female are visible in the most obscure
manifestations of sexual life: the fundamental psychology of an ascide
does not differ from that of an insect, or from that of a mammal.