As strange as it may seem, many intelligent men were loth to part with their belief in the existence of these double-sexed individuals; the logic used by many of these insisters of hermaphrodism, although now very ridiculous, was no doubt sensible logic one hundred and fifty years ago. As a matter of curiosity, some of this reasoning will bear repeating. It is taken from a Latin edition of an ancient description of Florida, originally in the English, but translated into the Latin by the geographer, Mercator. In this book we find the roots of some of the myths that led Ponce de Leon and his steel-clad warriors to wander through Florida in a vain search of that spring or fountain of the waters of perpetual youth and of everlasting life which they were never to find. We there learn that, in the days of the good old Spanish knight, the inhabitants of Florida lived to a very old age, and that they did not marry until very late in life, as before that period it was very difficult to determine the sex of the individual.
From what has since been seen among the Indians, the probability is that these were really eunuchs, and probably in slavery, as the result of the fortunes of war, as their great number and servile condition will hardly admit of the belief that they belonged to the same tribe as their masters and oppressors. Pederasty was an old, very old practice, being mentioned before circumcision; it prevailed among many of the Orientals, and among the many peoples by whom the early Jews were surrounded, who were, according to the Old Testament, about as an immoral, dissolute, and bestial a set as one could well imagine. Their religions were nothing but a gross mixture of stupid superstition and blind idolatry, pederasty, fornication, and general cussedness. In the then state of the Jewish nation, to have allowed them to mingle freely with these people would have ended in having the Jews adopt all their customs and habits. The aim of the Jewish leaders was to prevent any too free intercourse of their people with these nations, that they might remain uncontaminated even while dwelling near them. To accomplish this it was necessary to raise a barrier that would be the distinguishing mark of the Jewish nation. Jahns, in his learned work on the "History of the Hebrew Commonwealths,"[41] lays down the idea that circumcision, as well as many articles in their laws,--which to us appear trivial,--were in reality intended to separate the Jews farther and farther from their idolatrous, bestial, and heathenish neighbors, while at the same time these same ordinances were intended to preserve a constant knowledge of the true and only God, and maintain their moral and physical health.