Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/301

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SEXUAL CEREBRATION.
287


ness that goes with them. Upon this point I know there is great difference of opinion among those who have a right to speak. But, to those who do see the cogency of the evidences of modern physiology and modern psychology in this direction, it is a very serious thing to consider that not only the earth itself and all that beautiful face of Nature we see, but also the living things upon it, and all the consciousness of men, and the ideas of society, which have grown up upon the surface, must come to an end. We who hold that belief must just face the fact and make the best of it; and I think we are helped in this by the words of that Jew philosopher who was himself a worthy crown to the splendid achievements of his race in the cause of progress during the middle ages, Benedict Spinoza. He said, "The freeman thinks of nothing so little as of death, and his contemplation is not of death but of life." Our interest, it seems to me, lies with so much of the past as may serve to guide our actions in the present, and to intensify our pious allegiance to the fathers who have gone before us, and the brethren who are with us; and our interest lies with so much of the future as we may hope will be appreciably affected by our good actions now. Beyond that, as it seems to me, we do not know, and we ought not to care. Do I seem to say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die?" Far from it; on the contrary, I say, "Let us take hands and help, for this day we are alive together."—Fortnightly Review.

SEXUAL CEREBRATION.

By ELY VAN DE WARKER, M. D.

BY sexual cerebration is meant the existence of sex in the emotional and ideo-motor psychical nature of women and men, from which originate per se emotions and states of consciousness which distinguish and give character to the intellection of the sexes. It is sex in mental, as distinguished from sex in physical development. It is to mental operations what the prism is to light—a medium of refraction; a bending, as it were, of the axis of thought.

Having postulated that certain differences exist mentally between the sexes, is it possible to determine the extent and nature of the difference? Is it also possible to trace this difference to a sexual factor? It is evident that, if we can reach the truth, approximately, in the first question, the establishment of the second is easy.

There appears to me but one way of studying this question. The old speculative method of investigating metaphysical questions must be abandoned. We must grapple with this psychological problem from a few fixed points; like points of triangulation, to measure distances which otherwise may remain unknown. We must reason from