numerous organisms we find that many of them still possess the power

of reproducing themselves by division or a process of "budding." In

the case of certain plants and animals, cell-groups grow together into

a so-called "bud," which later detaches itself from the parent body

and forms a new individual living organism, as in the case of the

polyps or the tubers in plant life.

A tree, for instance, may be grown from a graft which has been cut off

and planted in the ground. And ants and bees which have not been

fecundated are quite capable of laying eggs out of which develop

perfect, well-formed descendants. This last process is called

parthenogenesis. It is a process, however, which if carried on through

several generations, ends in deterioration and degeneracy. In the case

of the higher animals, vertebrates and man, such reproduction is an

impossibility.

These higher types of animal life have been provided by nature with

special organs of reproduction and reproductive glands whose

secretions, when they are projected from the body under certain

conditions, reproduce themselves, and increase and develop in such

wise that the living organism from which they proceed is reproduced in

practically its identical form. Thus it perpetuates the original type.

Philosophically it may be said that these cells directly continue the

life of the parents, so that death in reality only destroys a part of

the individual. Every individual lives again in his offspring.

THE TRUE MISSION OF SEX

This rebirth of the individual in his descendants represents the true

mission of sex where the human being is concerned. And reproduction,

the perpetuation of the species, underlies all rightful and normal sex

functions and activities. The actual physical process of reproduction,

the details which initiate reproduction in the case of the human

being, it seems unnecessary here to describe. In the animal world,

into which the moral equation does not really enter, the facts of

conjugation represent a simple and natural working-out of functional

bodily laws, usually with a seasonal determination. But where man is

concerned these facts are so largely made to serve the purposes of

pruriency, so exploited to inflame the imagination in an undesirable

and directly harmful way that they can be approached only with the

utmost caution.

The intimate fact knowledge necessary in this connection is of a

peculiarly personal and sacred nature, and represents information

which is better communicated by the spoken than by the printed word.




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