Though it is probably never true that a man's skull can contain the brain of a woman, yet it is highly probable that there are rudimentary areas in the brains of all individuals which, correspond with the rudimentary remnants of the sexual organs of the opposite sex, and that these areas in the brain substance may exert an influence on the nervous system.
The possibilities of the female type are represented in every man by embryological residua, such as the Mullerian ducts, and the sinus pocularis or uterus masculinus; the female has the parovarium, which is the analogue of the male epididymis; and so also the clitoris is the homologue of the penis, the labia majora of the scrotum, and the ovaries and testicles are developed from a common germ epithelium.
No indisputable instance of true hermaphroditism has ever been recorded, each individual being essentially male or female; but cases are numerous in which there are approximations toward both sexes, with notable alterations of the figure, gait and disposition.
Externally a man has mammae, or breasts, with well developed nipples, and during early babyhood it is quite commonly possible for nurses to express milk from the breasts of infants, this being as frequently observed in one sex as the other. At puberty, also, milk can sometimes be expressed from the male mammae; and "in man and some other male mammals these organs have been known occasionally to become so well developed during maturity as to yield a fair supply of milk".
Before puberty, both the boy and the girl are to all intents and purposes of the neuter gender, and their physical and mental characters are not differentiated in any marked degree until the development of their sexual organs has caused them to diverge from their former somewhat parallel course. One cannot, if he would, prevent people saying, "He is so like his mother," or "so like his sister"; and it is futile for men to refuse to acknowledge some infusion of the womanly characteristics into their natures, and reprehensible for them to be ashamed of their maternal inheritance.
"A son, who cannot in the nature of the case exhibit them himself, still conveys his mother's special feminine qualities to his daughter, having them latent in him, as he has in him the rudimentary representatives of the special female organs; in like manner, a daughter conveys her father's special masculine qualities to her son, having them latent in her, as she has latent in her the rudimentary special male organs. Everybody, male or female, is essentially male and female."
Strong men have fainted, and you may faint; strong men have wept, and you may weep, as did Exeter over the death of Suffolk :
"The pretty and sweet manner of it forced Those waters from me
which I would have stopp'd;
But I had not so much of man in me,
And all my mother came into mine eyes And gave
me up to tears."
Shakespeare's keen perception did not fail to notice the womanly inheritance of men, and it might be that we should find the source of these "briny rivulets" in the feminine residua which are latent within us.
Men may have all these attributes of love, tenderness, charity, gentleness, chastity, etc., which are conceded to be womanly, without being effeminate; and tender women often show "a front of iron," and more pluck, courage and great heartedness than the best of men.