It emerges at an early period in the history of
philosophic thought, and from the first was occasionally used for
the explanation of homosexuality. Plato's myth in the _Banquet_
and the hermaphroditic statues of antiquity show how acute minds,
working ahead of science, exercised themselves with these
problems. (For a fully illustrated study of the ancient
conception of hermaphroditism in sculpture see L.S.A.M. von
Roemer, "Ueber die Androgynische Idee des Lebens," _Jahrbuch fuer
sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, vol. v, 1903, pp. 711-939.) Parmenides,
following Alcmaeon, the philosophic physician who discovered that
the brain is the central organ of intellect, remarks Gomperz
(_Greek Thinkers_, Eng. tr., vol. i, p. 183), used the idea of
variation in the proportion of male and female generative
elements to account for idiosyncrasies of sexual character. After
an immense interval Hoessli, the inverted Swiss man-milliner, in
his _Eros_ (1838) put forth the Greek view anew. Schopenhauer,
again from the philosophical side, recognized the bisexuality of
the human individual (see Juliusburger, _Allgemeine Zeitschrift
fuer Psychiatrie_, 1912, p.
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