Transvestism

“ Now, whatever one’s views may be on the subject of transformism, this prolonged permanence of certain genera and species is an indubitable fact, which is utterly irreconcilable with a universal law of organic evolution. The theory of transformism is impotent to explain an exception so palpable as this; for persistence and transmutation cannot be subsumed under one and the same principle. That which accounts for change cannot account for unchange. ”

“ If in these cases the reversion is brought about by a change in the conditions of life, we may perhaps suppose that the magnitude of this change would determine the degree of fertility, and the preservation of the reversion form. Still more, however, would the fertility be influenced by the extent of the morphological difference resulting from the reversion. We know that the blending of very different constitutions (e.g. the crossing of different species) produces sterility. Something similar results from the sudden reversion to a stage of development widely different in its whole structure. ”

“ The other, the so-called "transmutation" hypothesis, considers that all existing species are the result of the modification of pre-existing species, and those of their predecessors, by agencies similar to those which at the present day produce varieties and races, and therefore in an altogether natural way; and it is a probable, though not a necessary consequence of this hypothesis, that all living beings have arisen from a single stock. ”

“ In a debate upon the development hypothesis, lately narrated to me by a friend, one of the disputants was described as arguing that, as in all our experience we know of no such phenomenon as the transmutation of species, it is unphilosophical to assume that transmutation of species ever takes place. Had I been present, I think that, passing over his assertion, which is open to criticism, I should have replied that, as in all our experience we have never known a species created, it was, by his own showing, unphilosophical to assume that any species ever had been created. ”

“ In a crisis, when the life of one of the two seeds is trembling in the balance, one of them—through the exertion of its "Latent Reserve Energy," dominates, and engenders a child of the opposite sex. This reversal of the sex is in conformity with the Law of the Cross-Transmission of Sex; that is, the mother is represented in the male offspring and the father in the female,—this being the normal expression of the Law of Cross-Transmission of Characteristics. ”

“ Surely, the working of this principle of Correlation indicates a far-sighted Providence of the results, the disastrous monstrosities, that would otherwise have sprung from the law of Variation.
Man’s efforts are considerably limited, moreover, by the law of Reversion. Now, supposing many differing species to be descended, as we maintain, from common ancestors, what ought to be the observable effects of this law? Evidently, we should expect the character of one species now and then to appear in species allied to it, or species of kindred origin to vary in the same manner. ”

“ Such a doctrine is in reality nothing more than the transmutation theory, in all its unvarnished fulness; and I do not see how it can be for a moment maintained, so long as facts (and not reasoning only) are to be the basis of our speculations. I repeat, that it is merely within fixed specific bounds that I would advocate a freedom of development, in obedience to influences from without: only I would widen those limits to a much greater extent than has been ordinarily done,—so as to let in the controlling principle of physical agents, as a significant adjunct for our contemplation. ”

“ Lastly, in all cases of reversion, characters are transmitted through two, three, or many more generations, and are then developed under certain unknown favourable conditions. This important distinction between transmission and development will be best kept in mind by the aid of the hypothesis of pangenesis. According to this hypothesis, every unit or cell of the body throws off gemmules or undeveloped atoms, which are transmitted to the offspring of both sexes, and are multiplied by self-division. They may remain undeveloped during the early years of life or during successive generations ”

“ It is a notorious fact that children resemble their parents, and since members of the same species are sexually compatible and perfectly interfertile, there is no difficulty whatever in the way of accepting the presumption of descent from common ancestral stock as a satisfactory solution of the problem of specific resemblance. Now, it is precisely this selfsame principle of heredity which the Transformist invokes to account for generic, no less than for specific, similarity. ”

“ Rhys Davids has fully insisted upon the ethical importance of the transmigration theory. "One of the latest speculations now being put forward among ourselves would seek to explain each man's character, and even his outward condition in life, by the character he inherited from his ancestors, a character gradually formed during a practically endless series of past existences, modified only by the conditions into which he was born, those very conditions being also, in like manner, the last result of a practically endless series of past causes. ”

“ II. The theory of transmutation, or descent, is an essential and indispensable element in [5] the monistic development hypothesis, because it is the one only scientific theory which rationally explains the origin of organic species—that is to say, by transformation—and reduces it to mechanical principles. III. The theory of Selection or Darwinism is, up to the present time, the most important of the various theories which seek to explain the transformation of species by mechanical principles, but it is by no means the only one. ”

“ When such lines and forms of organic development prevail, the individual, as the cell of the body, becomes soon senescent, drifting inevitably into age, decay, and death. The great biologist and embryologist, Professor Minot, describes this downward course of organic evolution, as the Law of Genetic Restriction: "The development runs in one direction, and ends in the production of structure, which, if it is pursued to its legitimate terminus, results in degeneration and death." Societies, developing on lines of organic growth, follow the Law of Genetic Restriction. ”

“ But—and here is the great difficulty—how can the changed male have given his lost organs to his sex, and the female have transmitted her original but now modified peculiarities to the workers; especially as neuters do not propagate, and hence can not transmit their characters to progeny? Another law solves a portion of the difficulty: peculiarities acquired at any period of life are apt to appear in the same sex at the same time of life. ”

“ Individuals are here produced which alone acquire the power of sexual reproduction, and metagenesis is thus brought about, these individuals detaching themselves from the stock on which they originated, while the rest of the individuals remain in combination, and retain the asexual mode of propagation. ”

“ What, we may well ask, was the original cause and motive of the doctrine of transmigration? Something may be said in answer, though not at all enough for full explanation. The theory that ancestral souls return, thus imparting their own likeness of mind and body to their descendants and kindred, has been already mentioned and commended as in itself a very reasonable and philosophical hypothesis, accounting for the phenomenon of family likeness going on from generation to generation. But why should it have been imagined that men’s souls could inhabit the bodies of beasts and birds? ”

“ In regard, again, to the supposed "transmutation of species," we are equally warranted in affirming that it is destitute of all experimental evidence, and unsupported even by any natural analogy. As the doctrine of spontaneous generation stands opposed to the maxim that organic life can be produced only by organic life, so the doctrine of a transmutation of species stands opposed to the equally certain maxim that like produces like, both in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. ”

“ The only choice which sound logic can sanction is between fixism and a thoroughgoing system of transformism, which does not exempt the human body from the scope of the [Pg 269] evolutionary explanation. Indeed, the theory of evolution itself stands or falls upon this issue; for, if structures so strikingly similar as the skeletons of a man and an ape, respectively, have originated from two distinct ancestral stocks, then in no case at all is the inference of common descent from structural resemblance a legitimate procedure. ”

“ With these examples before our eyes, it is difficult to feel any confidence that either the lapse of time or civilization has made the bête humaine. On biological grounds there is no reason to expect it. No selection in favour of superior types is not going on; on the contrary, civilization tends now, as always, to an Ausrottung der Besten—a weeding-out of the best; and the new practice of subsidizing the unsuccessful by taxes extorted from the industrious is cacogenics erected into a principle. The best hope of stopping this progressive degeneration is in the science of eugenics. ”

“ Lastly, one of the most notable points about the theory of transmigration is its close bearing upon a thought which lies very deep in the history of philosophy, the development-theory of organic life in successive stages. An elevation from the vegetable to the lower animal life, and thence onward through the higher animals to man, to say nothing of superhuman beings, does not here require even a succession of distinct individuals, but is brought by the theory of metempsychosis within the compass of the successive vegetable and animal lives of a single being. ”

“ It might also be finally answered, that the tendency to reversion in different species may vary just as much as in different individuals of the same species. But, in any case, the fact is established that all individuals are impelled by cold to complete reversion, and that in these experiments it does not depend so particularly upon the moment of development when cold is applied, but that differences of individual constitution are much more the cause why cold brings some pupæ to complete, and others to partial, reversion, while yet others are30 quite uninfluenced. ”

“ Effemination and viraginity, are due directly to the influence of that strange law laid down by Darwin—the law of reversion to ancestral types. It is an effort of nature to return man to the old hermaphroditic form from which he was evolved. It is an effort on the part of nature to incorporate the individualities of the male and female, both physical and psychical, in one body. The phenomenon of atavism is more apt to occur in feeble types than in strong, healthy and well-developed types. ”

“ Neither those who were inclined towards the 'progressive transmutation' or 'development' doctrine, as it was then called, nor those who were opposed to it, had the slightest suspicion that the tendency to variation in living beings, which all admitted as a matter of fact ”

“ For if brain substance, for example, contributes nothing to the reproductive cells, any modification it acquires during individual life can only reach the germ through some indirect mode of influence. But does it-does any modification of the body substance -- so affect the germ as to become hereditary? Prof. Weismann answers this question by asserting that the evidence for the direct transmission of acquired characters is wholly insufficient, and by contending that, until· satisfactory evidence is forthcoming, we may not accept transmission as a factor in evolution. ”

“ Who can fail to see that these two processes, the reproduction of the germ-cell and its offspring in the economy of the individual, and the reproduction of individuals and species in the economy of the organic world, show an exact and by no means simply superficial analogy?296 But whoso grants this must also conceive both processes to depend upon the667 same cause—he cannot assume for the one a causal power and for the other a directive principle. If nutrition and cell-multiplication are purely mechanical processes, so also is heredity. ”

“ He thought it was intolerant to say he was not on scientific grounds because he was not falling into the path which was occupied by those who maintain that all organized beings have been derived from a few original progenitors. Other supporters of the transmutation doctrine assume that they can demonstrate the changes to have taken place by showing certain degrees of resemblance; but what they never touch is the quality and condition of those few first progenitors from which they were evolved. They assume that they contained all that is necessary to evolve what exists now. ”

“ According to all theories of transformism, new species arise through the transformation of old species, and hence evolutionists are at one in affirming the occurrence of specific change. When it comes, however, to assigning the agencies or factors, which are supposed to have brought about this transmutation of organic species, there is a wide divergence of opinion. ”

“ Hitherto, no rival hypothesis has been proposed as a substitute for the doctrine of transmutation; for what we term "independent creation," or the direct intervention of the Supreme Cause, must simply be considered as an avowal that we deem the question to lie beyond the domain of science. ”

“ The transmutation theory insists that they owe their origin to gradual transformations, and are not, therefore, the result of distinct creative acts. All agree, however, that we arrive at a lower stratum where no trace of life is to be found. ”