“It is a painful tale you have told me, Professor,” said I, “I sincerely hope you have got a pleasanter sequel to take off its sting. Well, our race has always had its ups and downs. The one seems always to breed the other. So as it has received a check now, that must be a prophecy of better times ahead. After all I shall be disappointed if human wit has been so completely baffled by that problem of population that it has failed to find a way for its regulation without violation of the generous instincts of humanity.” “Your confidence in human wit is commendable from a patriotic point of view,” returned the Professor, “but for this particular occasion it is not entirely justified. The fact is that not many years ago your race in North America and Europe had so crowded upon its conditions of comfortable existence that it was in imminent danger of a disastrous,[183] if not total collapse. The efforts then made to prevent this, resulted almost in the disorganization of society to such an extent that a collapse from this cause was seriously threatened. Your race and nation have been saved from such collapse and a repetition of one of its numerous relapses into barbarism, not, however, by human wit this time, but by the wisdom and generosity of the race I have the honor to represent.”
“What! the Lunarians?”
“The same. Our people saw the straits to which the human family was reduced, and willing that it should be spared the distress that they had been compelled to undergo before the discovery of the means of protection against themselves, they sent messengers to earth with the necessary facts and instructions.”
“I am amazed, and gratified,” said I, “for this signal proof that benevolence is not confined to any one world or race; but I am impatient to know what this wonderful and essential secret is, that defied the penetration of the wise of my own race.”
“Our belief,” said he, “is that it would not always have eluded them, but they would have failed to apprehend it in time to save the race from present disaster. The Lunarians have always taken a deep interest in Mundane affairs, and have given many hints to man, some of which have been acted upon with good results. But many others could not be properly acted on or even fairly understood, because the education of your race had not prepared them for it. We are often tempted to exclaim “what a stupid race.” But then we remember[184] how very young and immature you are, and we remember too that once we were in a like state of infancy ourselves, and so we exercise charity.”
“But what was the secret you told us?—I am anxious to learn at once, lest some accident shall forever bar my opportunity.”
“Well the secret is the simplest thing in the world, and your scientists have been reproaching themselves all over the earth for not having discovered it themselves. In fact, as they say, they did discover all around it when they lit upon the “Option of Sex.” It is simply the conditions for the production at will of the Third Sex.”
“The Third Sex!” I echoed in amazement.
“Yes the Third Sex. I prefer that name, though some have called it the neuter sex, others name it the Double Sex, or the Epicene or Common Sex, others the Hermes-Aphrodite. In some respects it is all of these, or either, or neither. But it is at any rate Third. I am not going to give you the recipe,” said he, “for if I do, when you leave here, and now and go back to the Nineteenth Century, you will be sure to let out the secret prematurely by two hundred years. But I can say that the development of the third sex is in reality no development at all, but an arrest of development, at a particular prenatal period. If you are informed in the science of embryology, you know that in the earliest stage of the embryos of all sexual animals, the sex is not determined, and at that stage there is nothing to distinguish whether the coming individual is to be male or female. It possesses possibilities[185] of either and therefore the germs of both. At a second stage the elements of the essential organs of both sexes are developed in each individual and then the individual is both male and female, but not fully matured or developed. At the third stage the organs distinguishing one of the sexes are carried forward to functional perfection, while those pertaining to the other, are not developed any further, and in some cases are partly undone again. Now if the developement of the embryonic sexual organs be arrested during the second stage of growth or before it, the individual will be neither male nor female, but will belong to the third sex. The manner in which this arrest can be accomplished is the secret we imparted to you 20 years ago, and by means of which the important problem of the control of population can be solved by you as it was long ago done by us.”
“Then you have the three sexes in the moon?”
“We have had them for many ages, in fact, we would not know how to exist if we had but two.”
“It is a wonder to me how you ever could have fallen upon so wonderful an arcanum—that nature seems to be carefully hiding from us.”
“Nature dropped the hint in this as in so many others of our discoveries. There were occasional examples of the third sex produced by nature and born into life, as there have been in the case of the human race as you must know. These examples excited curiosity, which led to the discovery, that they were due to arrested development. Further investigation and experiment showed this arrest to[186] be due to deprivation of a certain class of food, or rather of food in a certain dynamic condition, that is, under certain electric tensions. This condition again depends on the molecular structure of the food elements. When the food is deprived of the constituent plastidules[2] required for the nourishment and development of the tissues composing the embryo organs of sex; these tissues do not mature. And since the emasculation or invalidation of the food does not extend to, or affect the process of assimilation of the same nourishment by the other tissues, such as muscle, brain, nerve, bone, etc., the individual is built up to a symmetrically sexless maturity. And the development of sex is said to be arrested.
“If your people had been as wise as the bees they would have known how to produce the third sex simply as the bees do by supplying the appropriate sort of nutriment; for they, from the same sort of an egg, produce either a queen, a drone or a worker, the latter being of the neuter or third sex; simply by variations in the food and treatment.
“It is said, that it was by observing and following such hints as these that our ancestors learned how to produce the same results the bees have accomplished.”
While the Professor was making this explanation, the question arose in my mind whether this discovery, surprising as it was, was sufficient to rectify the ills that our race had encountered. Would there not be some unforeseen drawback as[187] there had proved to be to the other schemes, that would neutralize the anticipated benefits, or work another disaster as great as the one it was intended to cure. Was the third sex in itself a desirable or happy kind of condition to have. The contemplation of this subject, at first repulsive; when viewed philosophically becomes exceedingly interesting as one of the curious flights of nature. It is true that the specimens of these people she has furnished us on earth, we have commonly regarded as unhappy monstrosities.—But that is no doubt due to ignorance and prejudice, and to the anomalous conditions into which they are born. I expressed myself somewhat in accordance with these reflections, after which the Professor with some hesitation proceeded.
“In your day the family was spoken of as the basis and the bond of society; and by the family was meant a father and mother and a brood of children, all living together and working and caring for each other. The family was the laboratory for the creation and preparation of the citizens of the state. As an instrument for the education and development of the young citizens it was discovered to be, in civil life, inefficient and costly very unequal in its results and entailing an unequal and unjust distribution of its burdens. The state gradually assumed one after another of these former family duties and burdens in the rearing and development of the young, and in doing so, gradually disintegrated the family until there was nothing left of it except a pair of people, a man and a woman. But in this the state only consummated a[188] process that had been begun generations before by the invention of labor saving machinery. The family of your day was already a very much dwindled affair, compared with that of ancient times. Then the members of the family made for themselves their clothing and everything they required and they constituted a military body of which the father was the chief. But when machinery and gunpowder were invented, labor and employment, in both peace and war, became specialized, and in the division of labor that followed, families were gradually separated so as to use the labor of their individual components to greater advantage and new combinations were formed that crossed and obliterated family lines.
“When the families gave up their children to the state to be brought up, it was a continuation of the same process in accordance with the eternal law of............