Nothing could be said more truly of Woman, and the ova she carries.  All that transpires during pubescence is symptomatic of the underlying tidal stir in the cells.  The uterus becomes gorged with blood periodically, to provide an enriched soil for the perhaps to be fertilized ovum to plant itself.  The breasts grow, and fat is deposited in particular places as reserve material for the making of milk.  The qualities which are to appeal to the eye and ear and even nostrils of the male appear.  Instincts dawn, an independence of spirit germinates, emulsified with a curious shyness and coyness and a desperate loneliness and secrecy.  And all because there have been let loose in the blood from the glands of internal secretion the chemical substances that set going the clockwork of sequential incidents elaborated and repeated through countless aeons of time.

FEMININE PRECOCITY

Ordinarily, in the north temperate climate, puberty begins about the fourteenth year, but may begin anywhere from the tenth to the sixteenth.  Feeding and environment indirectly, the state of the internal secretions as a whole directly, determine this.  In girls, those definite signs, menstruation and the growth of the breasts, before the age of ten, mean premature awakening of the ovaries and a concomitant co-reaction of the other endocrines, creating the ensemble of maturity.

In females, the primary stimulus, the initial spark of femininity, must originate in the ovary.  There are other forms of precocity in the female, dependent upon stimulations of other glands, but these forms are masculinisms, a masculinization of the personality, and not a true awakening of the feminine constitution.  So one must distinguish sharply between a precocity by masculinization and precocity of premature feminization.  The latter always implies the touch of the fairy’s wand upon the sleeping ovaries.  Sexual precocity in boys may be produced by a premature overactivity not only of the specific reproductive organs:  the testes, but also by an early excess of secretion on the part of the cortex of the adrenal gland or the pituitary gland, or by a too early involution of the pineal or thymus.  When such abnormalities of adrenal, pituitary, thymus or pineal occur in girls, it is the masculine streak in the hastening of growth that is made manifest.  All this emphasizes the relative bisexuality of every normal, no matter how pronounced, when superficially viewed, his or her form of predominating sex may be.  Under the right conditions recession of the most marked virility or femininity becomes conceivable, and occurs.

THE SECRET OF THE MASCULINE

Masculinization having entered upon the scene, one may well ask:  what truly (which means chemically) lies behind all these differences and divergences between male and female?  What is the secret of the variable internal secretion admixtures?  You can tell us that the recipes are different, the ingredients different, the results different as a Nesselrode pudding is from, say, a rice pudding.  But what is the inner mechanism of the process?  Since the masculine and the feminine are but expressions of certain relative capacities and potentialities, some single principle must run through the making of both.