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The Hermaphrodism of Adam by James G. Kiernan M.D. 1921
Read before the Chicago Academy of Medicine, April 28, 1921.
A tailor once sued a man for calling him an hermaphrodite. The evidence produced was very comical, the idea of the commonality regarding hermaphrodism being duly exploited. Even a common medical opinion is that hermaphrodism is a freak rather than a phase of embryogeny. The conception of Adam as an hermaphrodite will strike many as humourous and others as irreverent, and yet pious rabbis and equally pious Christian fathers wasted much ink over the discussion of this question. The term hermaphrodite, as is well known, was derived from a Greek myth credited to Ovid: Hermaphrodite, the son of Aphrodite and Hermes, was wooed when fifteen by a fountain nymph, Salamacis. Despite his repulse of her love she succeeded in embracing him. Thereupon she prayed the gods to unite him and her forever. This resulted in a being half male and half female.
Among many races the belief exists that the first human being was an hermaphrodite. Aristophanes details a Greek myth to the effect that in the beginning the human race was double, having two heads, four arms, four legs and each person of both sexes. Filled with pride, the race attempted to scale heaven. The gods wished to reduce their might and punish their temerity but not to destroy them. On advice of Zeus each androgyne was so hewn asunder as to leave to each half a head, two arms, two legs and one sexual organ. The separation was keenly felt and reunion ardently desired by the two halves.
Races other than the Greeks had similar myths. According to a Hindu myth, when Brahma was creating beings he saw Kaya (body) divide itself into two parts, each of which was of a different sex. Thence sprang the whole human race. Another version states that Virach, the first man, fell into deep sorrow and, yearning for a companion, his nature developed into two sexes united in one. Then he separated the two individuals but found in the separation unhappiness, for he was conscious of his imperfection. Then he reunited the two portions and was happy. From that reunion the world was peopled. According to a Persian legend, the first man and first woman originally formed but one body. They were separated, and from their reunion sprang the whole race.
“The idea so prevalent that man without woman and woman without man is an imperfect being, was,” remarks Baring-Gould, “the cause of the great repugnance with which the Jews and other Eastern nations regarded celibacy. Thus Rabbi Eliezer commenting on the text, “He called their name Adam' (Genesis V, 21.) laid down that 'he who has not a wife is not a man for man is the recomposition of male and female into one.’”
The separation of the hermaphrodite being Adam, into first two (Adam and Lillith), and then three (Adam, Lillith and Eve), is utilized by Rider Haggard in “She" and “Ayesha;” and by Andrew Lang and Rider Haggard in “The World's Desire.” One of the female beings separated is always capriciously evil. The intense desire for reunion of the separate beings pictured alike by the Greek, Indian, Persian and other myths, appears in these tales.
“That man was created double (that is male and female) is, and has been,” remarks Baring-Gould, “a common opinion. One rabbinical interpretation of the text, “And God created man in his own image, male and female created he them,' is that Adam and Eve were formed back to back, united at the shoulders, and were hewn asunder with a hatchet.
“The notion of the first man having been of both sexes till the separation was very common. Eugubinus among Christian commentators, Rabbis Samuel, Manasseh ben Israel and Maimonides among the Jews, have supported this interpretation. Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eleazer by authority of the text (Psalms CXXXIX, 4): “Thou hast fashioned me behind and before,’ argued that Adam had two faces, one male and the other female and that he was of both sexes. Rabbi Samuel ben Nahamann held that the first man was created double with a woman at his back and that God cut them apart. ‘Adam.' said other rabbis, had two faces and one tail. From the beginning he was both male and female; male on one side, female on the other; afterwards the parts were separated.’ The Talmudists assert that God cut off Adam's tail and thereof formed Eve.” “This myth,” continues Baring-Gould, “agrees with the similar ludicrous myth of the Kickapoo Indians.” The rabbis adopted this view as an explanation of the double account of the creation of woman in Genesis (first in Genesis I, 27 and second in Genesis II, 18). These two accounts, as Laing” points out, are Jahvehistic and Elohistic, respectively.
The two wives of Adam play a part in the separation. Adam's first wife, Lillith, was expelled from Eden. After her expulsion Eve was created. “Certain rabbis,” according to Abraham Echellensis, “gave to Adam a wife called Lillith, formed, like Adam, of clay, resting on the scripture male and female created He them." Lillith, proud of her simultaneous creation with Adam, became vexatious to her husband. God expelled her from Paradise. He said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a help-meet for him.’ Adam, when he saw the woman fashioned from his rib, said: “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.’
“The rabbis say that when Eve had to be drawn out of the side of Adam she was not extracted by the head, lest she be vain; nor by the mouth, lest she be given to gossiping; nor by the ears, lest she should be an eavesdropper; nor by the hands, lest she should be meddlesome; nor by the feet, lest she should be a gadabout; nor by the heart, lest she should be jealous, but that she should be drawn forth by the side. Yet notwithstanding all the precautions she has every fault specially guarded against.”
The Manicheses hold that Adam was like a beast, coarse, rude and inanimate. From Eve he derived his upright position, his polish, his spirituality. The Manicheses were a heretical Christian sect who derived many doctrines from Zoroaster, whose system has traces of the Persian matriarchate. Lillith became hostile to Eve's children (whence the charm Lullaby, from the Arabic, Lilith Abi, or Lilith, go away). She also became a vampire preying on young men. From the serpent metamorphosis involved in this seduction she was identified with the Greek queen Lamia whose children, by Zeus, Hera destroyed. Thenceforward Lamia slew children whenever possible. She also enticed young men and then turning into a serpent slew them. Keats’ “Lamia” deals with this serpent phase which Lamia had in common with Lilith. To the latter Rossetti has devoted two poems, “Lilith" and “Eden Bower.” The Babylonian incantation ritual has a demon Litu and a consort Lilitu who plagued young men at night. From Babylon's traditions came the Hebrew.
Myth and biology agree that man had an hermaphrodic ancestor. A study by me of the psychological aspects of the sexual appetite published thirty-seven years ago took the stand that man had passed through a bisexual evolution. An amplification of it, which was read before the Chicago Academy of Medicine in 1891 and later published, was approvingly cited by G. Frank Lydston, Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis and others. As Shattuck and Seligman remark, “Hermaphrodism, far from being regarded as phenomenal amongst the vertebrates, should be viewed as a reversion to the primitive ancestral phase in which bisexuality was the normal disposition.”
Sex is not an entity but an evolution, it must be remembered. The reproductive appetite, as Rolph pointed out about half a century ago, is a derivation of the nutritive. The impelling force to conjugation is cell hunger. The evolution of reproduction from hunger, in which evolution hermaphrodism arose, is vividly pictured by E. Carpenter: “Love seems to be primarily (perhaps ultimately) an exchange of essences. The protozoa (those earliest cells, the progenitors of the whole animal and vegetable kingdom) grow by feeding on the minute particles which they find in the fluid surrounding them. The growth continues until ultimately, reaching the limits of convenient size, a cell devides into two or more portions, and so reproduces itself. The descendant cells or portions so thrown off are simply continuations by division of the life of the original or parent cell, so that it has not infrequently been said that in a sense, these protozoa are immortal, since their life continues indefinitely (with branching but without break) from generation to generation. This form of reproduction by simple budding or division extends even into the higher types of life where it is sometimes found side by side with the later sexual form of reproduction, as in so-called parthenogenesis among insects. It is indeed a kind of virgin birth, and is well illustrated in the vegetable world by the budding of bulbs, or by the fact that a twig torn from a shrub and placed in the ground will commonly grow and continue the life of the parent plant, or in the lower stages of the animal world where, among many of the worms, insects, sponges, etc., life may similarly be continued by division, or by the extrusion of a bud or egg without any sex contact or sex action whatever. This seems in fact to be the original and primitive form of generation, and it obviously depends upon growth. Generation is the superfluity of growth and connects itself in the first place with the satisfaction of hunger. First hunger, then growth, then reproduction by division or budding. And this process may go on apparently for many generations without change—in the case of certain protozoa even to hundreds of generations. But a time comes when the growth, power and energy decay and vitality diminishes — at any rate as a rule. But a variation occurs. Two cells unite, exchange fluids and part. It is a new form of nourishment, it is the earliest form of love. It is a very intimate form of nourishment, for it appears that in general the nuclei themselves of the two cells are shared; in part exchanged. So far there seems to be but little difference between hunger and love. Love is only a special hunger which leads cells to obtain nourishment from other cells of the same species; and generation or reproduction in these early stages being an inevitable accompaniment of growth, follows on the satisfaction of love. Just as it follows upon the satisfaction of hunger. And so far there is no distinction of sex. It is true there may be sex in the sense of union or fusion between two individuals, but there is no distinction of sex, in the sense of male and female.
“At a later period sex comes in. For growth (and reproduction) two things are necessary. The two sets of qualities are clearly useful only in combination with each other and yet they are in some degree contrary to each other. Therefore it is quite natural that the two corresponding groups of individuals should form two great branches in each race, diverse yet united. These two branches are the male and female — the active, energy—spending, hungry, food-obtaining, branch, and the sessile, non-active, assimilative and reproductive branch. It is by the fusion that development and reproduction are secured. (Animal life is divisible into the protozoa [one-celled animals], polyzoa [colony animals where certain members of the colony perform certain functions] and metazoa [many-celled animals]). It is in the metazoa generally and those forms which consist of co-operative colonies of cells (polyzoa) that sex differentiation into male and female, begins decisively to assert itself. Here, since it is obviously impossible for all the cells of one individual to fuse with all the cells of another, certain special cells are set apart in each organism for the purpose of union or conjugation. It seems quite natural that in the course of time the differentiation into male and female should set in — each individual tending to become either masculine or feminine — both in sex cells or sex apparatus and (though in a less marked degree) in the general body and structure. In the lower forms of life generally, as among some amphibia, fish, mollusks, etc., the male and female sex cells — the sperm and germ — do not conjugate within either of the parent bodies but are expelled from each in order to meet and fuse in some surrounding medium like water. Thus the double cell, so formed, develops into the new individual. But in the higher forms the meeting takes place and the first stage of development ensues within one of the bodies. As we might expect, this occurs within the body of the female. For the female represents quiescence, growth, assimilation. The ovum is large compared with the spermatozoon; it is also sessile in habit. The spermatozoon is exceedingly active. Just as, in general, the female remains impassive and quiescent and is sought by the male, so the female germ remains at home within the female body and receives its visitor or visitors there.”
From the phases of evolution outlined by Carpenter arose the view of G. de Letamendi that there is a principle of panhermapyhrodism — a hermaphroditic bipolarity — which involves the existence of latent male germs in the female and latent female germs in the male. These latent germs may strive for and sometimes obtain the mastery. This view was supported by Kurella and D. Berry Hart, who regard the normal male and female as embodying a maximum of the potent organs of his or her sex with a minimum of non-potent organs of the other sex, with secondary sex traits congruent Any increase in the minimum gives a diminished maximum and no congruence of the sexual characters. This leads to the partial or unilateral hermaphrodism which is relatively not infrequent. True hermaphrodism, really a phase of the double monster, is exceedingly rare.
The social relations of hermaphrodites (the pseudo-partial, unilateral and true hermaphrodites) especially in their medico-legal aspects, were exhaustively studied by Neugebauer, whose work is a treasury of startling facts. His statistics of divorce for hermaphroditic reasons are impressive.
Hermaphrodism has held an important place in the minds and religions of primitive and even civilized races. Their gods and carved fetiches were often hermaphroditic. Thus in India the Ardanari Ishwara symbolized by a carving the following quotation from the Puranas: “The supreme spirit in the act of creation became by Yoga twofold. The right side was male, the left was Prakiti. She is of one form with Brahma.” Another androgynous deity is Addha Nasi. In many of the primitive tales the female element either is of fiendish origin or becomes evil when separated. Of this Adam seems to have had a delectable experience.
Read before the Chicago Academy of Medicine, April 28, 1921.
A tailor once sued a man for calling him an hermaphrodite. The evidence produced was very comical, the idea of the commonality regarding hermaphrodism being duly exploited. Even a common medical opinion is that hermaphrodism is a freak rather than a phase of embryogeny. The conception of Adam as an hermaphrodite will strike many as humourous and others as irreverent, and yet pious rabbis and equally pious Christian fathers wasted much ink over the discussion of this question. The term hermaphrodite, as is well known, was derived from a Greek myth credited to Ovid: Hermaphrodite, the son of Aphrodite and Hermes, was wooed when fifteen by a fountain nymph, Salamacis. Despite his repulse of her love she succeeded in embracing him. Thereupon she prayed the gods to unite him and her forever. This resulted in a being half male and half female.
Among many races the belief exists that the first human being was an hermaphrodite. Aristophanes details a Greek myth to the effect that in the beginning the human race was double, having two heads, four arms, four legs and each person of both sexes. Filled with pride, the race attempted to scale heaven. The gods wished to reduce their might and punish their temerity but not to destroy them. On advice of Zeus each androgyne was so hewn asunder as to leave to each half a head, two arms, two legs and one sexual organ. The separation was keenly felt and reunion ardently desired by the two halves.
Races other than the Greeks had similar myths. According to a Hindu myth, when Brahma was creating beings he saw Kaya (body) divide itself into two parts, each of which was of a different sex. Thence sprang the whole human race. Another version states that Virach, the first man, fell into deep sorrow and, yearning for a companion, his nature developed into two sexes united in one. Then he separated the two individuals but found in the separation unhappiness, for he was conscious of his imperfection. Then he reunited the two portions and was happy. From that reunion the world was peopled. According to a Persian legend, the first man and first woman originally formed but one body. They were separated, and from their reunion sprang the whole race.
“The idea so prevalent that man without woman and woman without man is an imperfect being, was,” remarks Baring-Gould, “the cause of the great repugnance with which the Jews and other Eastern nations regarded celibacy. Thus Rabbi Eliezer commenting on the text, “He called their name Adam' (Genesis V, 21.) laid down that 'he who has not a wife is not a man for man is the recomposition of male and female into one.’”
The separation of the hermaphrodite being Adam, into first two (Adam and Lillith), and then three (Adam, Lillith and Eve), is utilized by Rider Haggard in “She" and “Ayesha;” and by Andrew Lang and Rider Haggard in “The World's Desire.” One of the female beings separated is always capriciously evil. The intense desire for reunion of the separate beings pictured alike by the Greek, Indian, Persian and other myths, appears in these tales.
“That man was created double (that is male and female) is, and has been,” remarks Baring-Gould, “a common opinion. One rabbinical interpretation of the text, “And God created man in his own image, male and female created he them,' is that Adam and Eve were formed back to back, united at the shoulders, and were hewn asunder with a hatchet.
“The notion of the first man having been of both sexes till the separation was very common. Eugubinus among Christian commentators, Rabbis Samuel, Manasseh ben Israel and Maimonides among the Jews, have supported this interpretation. Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eleazer by authority of the text (Psalms CXXXIX, 4): “Thou hast fashioned me behind and before,’ argued that Adam had two faces, one male and the other female and that he was of both sexes. Rabbi Samuel ben Nahamann held that the first man was created double with a woman at his back and that God cut them apart. ‘Adam.' said other rabbis, had two faces and one tail. From the beginning he was both male and female; male on one side, female on the other; afterwards the parts were separated.’ The Talmudists assert that God cut off Adam's tail and thereof formed Eve.” “This myth,” continues Baring-Gould, “agrees with the similar ludicrous myth of the Kickapoo Indians.” The rabbis adopted this view as an explanation of the double account of the creation of woman in Genesis (first in Genesis I, 27 and second in Genesis II, 18). These two accounts, as Laing” points out, are Jahvehistic and Elohistic, respectively.
The two wives of Adam play a part in the separation. Adam's first wife, Lillith, was expelled from Eden. After her expulsion Eve was created. “Certain rabbis,” according to Abraham Echellensis, “gave to Adam a wife called Lillith, formed, like Adam, of clay, resting on the scripture male and female created He them." Lillith, proud of her simultaneous creation with Adam, became vexatious to her husband. God expelled her from Paradise. He said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a help-meet for him.’ Adam, when he saw the woman fashioned from his rib, said: “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.’
“The rabbis say that when Eve had to be drawn out of the side of Adam she was not extracted by the head, lest she be vain; nor by the mouth, lest she be given to gossiping; nor by the ears, lest she should be an eavesdropper; nor by the hands, lest she should be meddlesome; nor by the feet, lest she should be a gadabout; nor by the heart, lest she should be jealous, but that she should be drawn forth by the side. Yet notwithstanding all the precautions she has every fault specially guarded against.”
The Manicheses hold that Adam was like a beast, coarse, rude and inanimate. From Eve he derived his upright position, his polish, his spirituality. The Manicheses were a heretical Christian sect who derived many doctrines from Zoroaster, whose system has traces of the Persian matriarchate. Lillith became hostile to Eve's children (whence the charm Lullaby, from the Arabic, Lilith Abi, or Lilith, go away). She also became a vampire preying on young men. From the serpent metamorphosis involved in this seduction she was identified with the Greek queen Lamia whose children, by Zeus, Hera destroyed. Thenceforward Lamia slew children whenever possible. She also enticed young men and then turning into a serpent slew them. Keats’ “Lamia” deals with this serpent phase which Lamia had in common with Lilith. To the latter Rossetti has devoted two poems, “Lilith" and “Eden Bower.” The Babylonian incantation ritual has a demon Litu and a consort Lilitu who plagued young men at night. From Babylon's traditions came the Hebrew.
Myth and biology agree that man had an hermaphrodic ancestor. A study by me of the psychological aspects of the sexual appetite published thirty-seven years ago took the stand that man had passed through a bisexual evolution. An amplification of it, which was read before the Chicago Academy of Medicine in 1891 and later published, was approvingly cited by G. Frank Lydston, Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis and others. As Shattuck and Seligman remark, “Hermaphrodism, far from being regarded as phenomenal amongst the vertebrates, should be viewed as a reversion to the primitive ancestral phase in which bisexuality was the normal disposition.”
Sex is not an entity but an evolution, it must be remembered. The reproductive appetite, as Rolph pointed out about half a century ago, is a derivation of the nutritive. The impelling force to conjugation is cell hunger. The evolution of reproduction from hunger, in which evolution hermaphrodism arose, is vividly pictured by E. Carpenter: “Love seems to be primarily (perhaps ultimately) an exchange of essences. The protozoa (those earliest cells, the progenitors of the whole animal and vegetable kingdom) grow by feeding on the minute particles which they find in the fluid surrounding them. The growth continues until ultimately, reaching the limits of convenient size, a cell devides into two or more portions, and so reproduces itself. The descendant cells or portions so thrown off are simply continuations by division of the life of the original or parent cell, so that it has not infrequently been said that in a sense, these protozoa are immortal, since their life continues indefinitely (with branching but without break) from generation to generation. This form of reproduction by simple budding or division extends even into the higher types of life where it is sometimes found side by side with the later sexual form of reproduction, as in so-called parthenogenesis among insects. It is indeed a kind of virgin birth, and is well illustrated in the vegetable world by the budding of bulbs, or by the fact that a twig torn from a shrub and placed in the ground will commonly grow and continue the life of the parent plant, or in the lower stages of the animal world where, among many of the worms, insects, sponges, etc., life may similarly be continued by division, or by the extrusion of a bud or egg without any sex contact or sex action whatever. This seems in fact to be the original and primitive form of generation, and it obviously depends upon growth. Generation is the superfluity of growth and connects itself in the first place with the satisfaction of hunger. First hunger, then growth, then reproduction by division or budding. And this process may go on apparently for many generations without change—in the case of certain protozoa even to hundreds of generations. But a time comes when the growth, power and energy decay and vitality diminishes — at any rate as a rule. But a variation occurs. Two cells unite, exchange fluids and part. It is a new form of nourishment, it is the earliest form of love. It is a very intimate form of nourishment, for it appears that in general the nuclei themselves of the two cells are shared; in part exchanged. So far there seems to be but little difference between hunger and love. Love is only a special hunger which leads cells to obtain nourishment from other cells of the same species; and generation or reproduction in these early stages being an inevitable accompaniment of growth, follows on the satisfaction of love. Just as it follows upon the satisfaction of hunger. And so far there is no distinction of sex. It is true there may be sex in the sense of union or fusion between two individuals, but there is no distinction of sex, in the sense of male and female.
“At a later period sex comes in. For growth (and reproduction) two things are necessary. The two sets of qualities are clearly useful only in combination with each other and yet they are in some degree contrary to each other. Therefore it is quite natural that the two corresponding groups of individuals should form two great branches in each race, diverse yet united. These two branches are the male and female — the active, energy—spending, hungry, food-obtaining, branch, and the sessile, non-active, assimilative and reproductive branch. It is by the fusion that development and reproduction are secured. (Animal life is divisible into the protozoa [one-celled animals], polyzoa [colony animals where certain members of the colony perform certain functions] and metazoa [many-celled animals]). It is in the metazoa generally and those forms which consist of co-operative colonies of cells (polyzoa) that sex differentiation into male and female, begins decisively to assert itself. Here, since it is obviously impossible for all the cells of one individual to fuse with all the cells of another, certain special cells are set apart in each organism for the purpose of union or conjugation. It seems quite natural that in the course of time the differentiation into male and female should set in — each individual tending to become either masculine or feminine — both in sex cells or sex apparatus and (though in a less marked degree) in the general body and structure. In the lower forms of life generally, as among some amphibia, fish, mollusks, etc., the male and female sex cells — the sperm and germ — do not conjugate within either of the parent bodies but are expelled from each in order to meet and fuse in some surrounding medium like water. Thus the double cell, so formed, develops into the new individual. But in the higher forms the meeting takes place and the first stage of development ensues within one of the bodies. As we might expect, this occurs within the body of the female. For the female represents quiescence, growth, assimilation. The ovum is large compared with the spermatozoon; it is also sessile in habit. The spermatozoon is exceedingly active. Just as, in general, the female remains impassive and quiescent and is sought by the male, so the female germ remains at home within the female body and receives its visitor or visitors there.”
From the phases of evolution outlined by Carpenter arose the view of G. de Letamendi that there is a principle of panhermapyhrodism — a hermaphroditic bipolarity — which involves the existence of latent male germs in the female and latent female germs in the male. These latent germs may strive for and sometimes obtain the mastery. This view was supported by Kurella and D. Berry Hart, who regard the normal male and female as embodying a maximum of the potent organs of his or her sex with a minimum of non-potent organs of the other sex, with secondary sex traits congruent Any increase in the minimum gives a diminished maximum and no congruence of the sexual characters. This leads to the partial or unilateral hermaphrodism which is relatively not infrequent. True hermaphrodism, really a phase of the double monster, is exceedingly rare.
The social relations of hermaphrodites (the pseudo-partial, unilateral and true hermaphrodites) especially in their medico-legal aspects, were exhaustively studied by Neugebauer, whose work is a treasury of startling facts. His statistics of divorce for hermaphroditic reasons are impressive.
Hermaphrodism has held an important place in the minds and religions of primitive and even civilized races. Their gods and carved fetiches were often hermaphroditic. Thus in India the Ardanari Ishwara symbolized by a carving the following quotation from the Puranas: “The supreme spirit in the act of creation became by Yoga twofold. The right side was male, the left was Prakiti. She is of one form with Brahma.” Another androgynous deity is Addha Nasi. In many of the primitive tales the female element either is of fiendish origin or becomes evil when separated. Of this Adam seems to have had a delectable experience.
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