The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher, Aristotle [best fiction novels of all time .txt] 📗

Virginity, what it is, in what it consists, and how vitiated; together with the Opinions of the Learned about the Change of Sex in the Womb, during the Operation of Nature in forming the Body.

There are many ignorant people that boast of their skill in the knowledge of virginity, and some virgins have undergone harsh censures through their ignorant conclusions; I therefore thought it highly necessary to clear up this point, that the towering imaginations of conceited ignorance might be brought down, and the fair sex (whose virtues are so illustriously bright that they excite our wonder and command our imitation), may be freed from the calumnies and detractions of ignorance and envy; and so their honour may continue as unspotted, as they have kept their persons uncontaminated and free from defilement.

Virginity, in a strict sense, signifies the prime, the chief, the best of anything; and this makes men so desirous of marrying virgins, imagining some secret pleasure is to be enjoyed in their embraces, more than in those of widows, or of such as have been lain with before, though not many years ago, a very great personage thought differently, and to use his own expression:—"The getting a maidenhead was such a piece of drudgery, that it was fitter for a coal heaver than a prince." [1] But this was only his opinion, for I am sure that other men think differently.

The curious inquirers into the secrets of Nature, have observed, that in young maidens in the sinus pudoris, or in what is called the neck of the womb, is that wonderful production usually called the hymen, but in French bouton de rose, or rosebud, because it resembles the expanded bud of a rose or a gilly flower. From this the word defloro, or, deflower, is derived, and hence taking away virginity is called deflowering a virgin, most being of the opinion that the virginity is altogether lost when this membrane is fractured and destroyed by violence; when it is found perfect and entire, however, no penetration has been effected; and in the opinion of some learned physicians there is neither hymen nor expanded skin which contains blood in it, which some people think, flows from the ruptured membrane at the first time of sexual intercourse.

Now this claustrum virginale, or flower, is composed of four little buds like myrtle berries, which are full and plump in virgins, but hang loose and flag in women; and these are placed in the four angles of the sinus pudoris, joined together by little membranes and ligatures, like fibres, each of them situated in the testicles, or spaces between each bud, with which, in a manner, they are proportionately distended, and when once this membrane is lacerated, it denotes Devirgination. Thus many ignorant people, finding their wives defective in this respect on the first night, have immediately suspected their chastity, concluding that another man had been there before them, when indeed, such a rupture may happen in several ways accidentally, as well as by sexual intercourse, viz. by violent straining, coughing, or sneezing, the stoppage of the urine, etc., so that the entireness or the fracture of that which is commonly taken for a woman's virginity or maidenhead, is no absolute sign of immorality, though it is more frequently broken by copulation than by any other means. [2]

And now to say something of the change of the sexes in the womb. The genital parts of the sexes are so unlike each other in substance, composition, situation, figure, action and use that nothing is more unlike to each other than they are, and the more, all parts of the body (the breasts excepted, which in women swell, because Nature ordained them for suckling the infant) have an exact resemblance to each other, so much the more do the genital parts of one sex differ, when compared with the other, and if they be thus different in form, how much more are they so in their use.

The venereal feeling also proceeds from different causes; in men from the desire of emission, and in women from the desire of reception. All these things, then, considered I cannot but wonder, he adds, how any one can imagine that the female genital organs can be changed into the male organ, since the sexes can be distinguished only by those parts, nor can I well impute the reason for this vulgar error to anything but the mistake of inexpert midwives, who have been deceived by the faulty conformation of those parts, which in some males may have happened to have such small protrusions that they could not be seen, as appears by the example of a child who was christened in Paris under the name of Ivan, as a girl, and who afterwards turned out to be a boy, and on the other hand, the excessive tension of the clytoris in newly-born female infants may have occasioned similar mistakes. Thus far Pliny in the negative, and notwithstanding what he has said, there are others, such as Galen, who assert the affirmative. "A man," he says, "is different from a woman, only by having his genitals outside his body, whereas a woman has them inside her." And this is certain, that if Nature having formed a male should convert him into a female, she has nothing else to do but to turn his genitals inward, and again to turn a woman into a man by a contrary operation. This, however, is to be understood of the child whilst it is in the womb and not yet perfectly formed, for Nature has often made a female child, and it has remained so for a month or two, in its mother's womb; but afterwards the heat greatly increasing in the genital organs, they have protruded and the child has become a male, but nevertheless retained some things which do not befit the masculine sex, such as female gestures and movements, a high voice, and a more effeminate temper than is usual with men; whilst, on the other hand, the genitals have become inverted through cold humours, but yet the person retained a masculine air, both in voice and gesture. Now, though both these opinions are supported by several reasons, yet I think the latter are nearer the truth, for there is not that vast difference between the genitals of the two sexes as Pliny asserts; for a woman has, in a way, the same pudenda as a man, though they do not appear outwardly, but are inverted for the convenience of generation; one being solid and the other porous, and that the principal reason for changing sexes is, and must be attributed to heat or cold, which operates according to its greater or lesser force.

FOOTNOTES:

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