Jean Rostand on the molecules responsible for the sexes

    We are all justified in thinking, “There but for a different molecule would I be the opposite sex.” Jean Rostand:
       
    The most vaporous of women owes her sheerest femininity to a certain complex alcohol or sterol which can, among its other capacities, change the plumage of the capon and swell the uterus of the mouse. As for man, he is forced to admit that he gets his proud virility from another sterol (incidentally, only very slightly different from the first) which also acts to darken the sparrow’s beak and the thumbs of the frog. And these two principles -– estrogen and testosterone, so powerfully and diversely morphogenic -– are not restricted to working upon the body: they affect the instincts, the tendencies, the desires; entering into the nervous system, they color the mind and soul; they have as much to say about the play of fantasy as about skin contacts. So, whenever testosterone predominates, a strong attraction will be felt for the forms modeled by estrogen.
    Whether one likes or not, and whatever the idealism one may subscribe to, the whole edifice of human love -– with all the word implies of animality and sublimation, of rage and sacrifice; with all that is frivolous, touching, or terrible in its meaning -– is constructed upon the minimal molecular differences among a few derivatives of phenanthrene. Is this a de-poeticization of love? Or might it be a poeticization of chemistry?
    Only a slight differentiation of structure separates the chemical compounds that compose the male and the female. Nature has divided the species inexpensively.

    (Quoted from page 35 of The Substance of Man, by Jean Rostand. Greenwood Press, 1972.)
    For a brief biography of Jean Rostand, click here. For images of or relating to Jean Rostand, click here.