Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

THE BIOLOGY OF SEXactive agent in these processes, we now regard the chemicalendocrine system as even more active, sometimesunder the influence of the nervous system, and frequentlyapart from nervous action, the nerves and nerve centersbeing themselves sometimes subject to chemical regulation.If we follow Langdon Brown, we may say that theendocrines are an elaboration of those chemical mechanismsto which animals responded before the nervous systemwas developed. It is an interesting proof of theprimitive nature of endocrine regulation of the organismthat all the hormonic messengers proceed from very ancientand even vestigial structures in the body,like thepituitary and the pineal. At the same time we may alsobear in mind, as Bolk emphasized some years ago, thatthe stimulation or retardation due to hormonic influencesis peculiarly influential in developing the specific humanqualities, and even, as Keith has more recently pointedout, the various racial human characteristics. When thenervous system began to take shape and even to acquiredominance, it entered into alliance with the preexistingchemical mechanisms, especially throughitslowest level,the visceral nervous system, subdivisible into the sympatheticsystem and the para-sympathetic (or extendedvagus)as tending to be katabolic and active, is associated withsystem. The sympathetic, which may be regardedthe pituitary, thyroid, and adrenals. The para-sympathetic,which may be regarded as largely anabolic and passive, isassociated with the pancreas and, indirectly, the parathyroids.These katabolic and anabolic systems are antagonistic,the rhythm of life, it has been said, dependingupon their balance. The gonads interact especially withthe sympathetic-endocrine group. The pineal and thymus,though not true endocrine glands (since they have no